


Student-Teacher Relations

by Ultra



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Romance, Birthday Party, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Kissing, Mathematics, Pride and Prejudice References, Teaching, Tutoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-18
Updated: 2009-08-18
Packaged: 2019-08-27 20:05:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 44,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16709164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: Dick Casablancas is having some problems, both academic and romantic. The only cure to his problems? The last girl he ever expected!





	1. Chapter 1

“What’s up, man?” Logan asked his good friend as he sat down beside him at the lunch table that had yet to draw a crowd.

“Dude, it is so not cool!” Dick complained loudly. “Madison is holding out on me and being a total bitch about everything, and my Dad is so on my back about my grades.” He shook his head, opening up a take-out carton and staring into it as if he hoped to find the meaning of life or similar in there.

“Wow.” Logan nodded thoughtfully, as he considered those problems. “So, it’s like your Dad won’t stop riding you hard, and Madison won’t start?” He smirked, even as Dick gave him the finger for a joke he did not find funny.

“You’re such an ass, Logan,” he complained, putting his food to one side because for once he just wasn’t hungry, “but my Dad is threatening to cut my allowance if my grades don’t go up soon. I tried telling him I’m rich and hot and that studying is like ‘Whatever, dude,’ but he won’t listen.”

“Stupid parents.” Logan shook his head as he snagged his friends abandoned Chinese food and dug in. “All they do is try to make us get an education and be good people. How the hell will that help in life?” he dead-panned with a roll of his eyes.

It clearly didn’t matter what he was saying since Dick so wasn’t paying attention anymore, and as the rest of their friends started to gather around the table, they too began to notice Dick’s un-Dick-like mood.

“What’s wrong with him?” Casey asked Logan. “Woman trouble?”

“That and parental issues,” he explained. “Daddy Dearest is threatening to tighten the purse strings if Dick here can’t bump a few Ds to Cs.”

“So get a tutor, man,” Casey advised the blond as he slapped him on the shoulder. “Seriously, it worked for me.”

“A tutor?” The look on Dick’s face was a picture as he squinted up at his friend. “You mean like pay a geek to do my homework for me?”

“I don’t think that’s quite how it works,” Duncan threw in with an amused smile. “The idea is that you pay someone to help you learn to do your own homework and to pass tests and stuff,” he explained it in as simple way as he could. “Y’know there are a lot of smart kids that’d help you out, they could use the cash.”

Dick looked oddly thoughtful as he considered it. Spending time with some geek, trying to learn Math and English and other borings things when he could be out surfing or drinking or working on getting his girlfriend to let him get past second already! The idea certainly didn’t appeal, especially if he was going to have to spend a chunk of his now smaller allowance for the privilege of such pain. Still, it had to be worth it, to make his Dad proud of him. It was a miracle that Big Dick even knew how his eldest son was doing in school, it would almost be worth proving he could do this just for the praise from his father that was rarely given.

“Hey, D-man,” he called to Duncan, interrupting the conversation he’d struck up elsewhere. “You know some cash-strapped geek that’d help me out?” he checked, as the young Kane shook his head.

“I don’t know if she’d appreciate you calling her that,” he said with a look, “but you know that girl that sits the row over from me in our English class? She has blue in her hair?” he made a gesture at the side of his head as he described her.

“The chick from Ghost World?” Dick said as he pictured the girl in question who he’d always thought was oddly hot for a geek from the poor side of town.

“I think her name’s Mac,” Duncan nodded once. “I heard her talking to her friend about looking for a part-time job to earn extra money, and you know she’s smart”

“Yeah.” Dick nodded as he thought it over.

Being tutored by a girl who wasn’t completely lacking in looks and ‘tude was certainly preferable over some nerd boy with glasses and a retainer, who Dick would be embarrassed to be seen with anywhere at any time. If he must spend time and money on this, it seemed the best option was the one Duncan had suggested. He’d learn stuff, pass a couple of classes, Big Dick should be proud of him, his allowance would be reinstated in full, and then he could take Madison out in style and give her the night of her life, for which he hoped she would return the favour on later.

“So, you gonna do it?” Logan asked his friend, who looked thoughtful still, an odd expression for one whose brain usually didn’t work all that fast or well.

“What do I have to lose, dude?” Dick shrugged his shoulders, as he scanned the quad, looking for the very girl they’d been talking about.

Mac was sat alone on the complete opposite side of the lunch area, and the irony was not lost even on Dick as to how appropriate that was. They were as far apart on the social and monetary spectrum as any two people could be, but he’d meant what he said. He had little to lose, after all, there was no particular shame with needing a tutor for the tough stuff like Math.

Getting up from his seat, he muttered a ‘see you guys later’ to his friends and strolled over to where Mac was tapping away on her laptop. At first it was as if she hadn’t even noticed he was stood there, til he moved over some, blocking out the sunlight and casting a shadow over her.

“Can I help you?” she asked, a little wary of her phrasing, after all Dick Casablancas was famous for twisting people’s words to make the very dumbest double-entendre he could possibly find.

‘No doubt he’s been dared to come over here and ask me what colour my panties are or something,’ Mac thought to herself as she stared up at the dumb blond and waited for his reply. He looked weird, like he didn’t even know himself what he was over here for. Just when Mac was about to prompt him in some way, he actually spoke.

“You’re Mac, right?” he checked. “The chick who gets As?”

“Correct on both counts.” She nodded once, still a little wary of where the hell this was headed and confused too if she was honest.

“Awesome,” he said with a grin, suddenly sitting down beside her and getting a little too into her personal space.

Mac shifted over as far as the bench seat allowed and closed the lid of her computer when she realised he could see if he wanted to. It wasn’t that what she’d been doing was particularly private but still it was no business of some surfer dude 09er that she barely knew.

“So, I don’t do so well with Math or English or any of that brainy stuff,” Dick admitted. “I was thinking maybe you wanna tutor me,” he suggested, cutting in the moment Mac opened her mouth to answer. “I’ll totally pay you,” he assured her. “'Cause I know you need the cash and everything.”

Mac’s eyes went wide at that particular comment. Sure, she could use come extra money for computer supplies and to keep her new car in shape, and she was considering tutoring to get that money. Still, Dick had hardly phrased his offer well and she ought to be insulted by his manner. As it was, she was actually quite intrigued. Saying yes meant spending time with this idiot, but she would get a better rate out of him than anyone in her own social bracket. Seeing as Math was one thing he had trouble with, she could probably pump him for a considerable amount of cash, which no doubt she would earn since Dick was unlikely to be a great student.

Quickly weighing up her options when she realised she probably looked like a landed fish with her mouth opening and closing and no sound coming out, Mac answered.

“I guess I could tutor you,” she said thoughtfully. “We’d have to figure out rates of pay, times for studying, all that kind of thing.”

“Sure,” Dick agreed. “You’re in charge, teach,” he said with a mock-salute that almost made Mac laugh as he dove up from the seat just as quickly as he sat down.

“You wanna start today or...?” she asked, wondering where he was running off to so suddenly, but then realising he was probably just embarrassed to be seen in public with someone like her, after all, they were hardly in the same social set.

“I guess.” He shrugged. “I have stuff right after school but you wanna come by my place say five thirty?” he suggested, calculating what time his Dad was likely to arrive home and catch him studying with his tutor - one of the major points to this was to impress Big Dick.

“O-okay.” Mac nodded, the word coming out a little more stammery than she’d meant it to, but then it wasn’t every day she was offered the chance to snoop around an 09er house.

As Dick strolled away with a grin on his face, Mac stared after him with a frown on hers. She could kind of understand why he would want a tutor though God only knew why he’d chosen her for the task. Still, if she was going to have to spend so many hours a week for the next month or so tutoring the 09er lunkhead that was Dick Casablancas she could at least look forward to a good amount of cash, maybe even enough to boost her college fund if this gig lasted long enough. Yeah, it was totally worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

“This is... surreal,” Mac said quietly to herself as she stood outside the front door of the Casablancas house, a huge building that dominated the area in which it sat. It wasn’t as if there weren’t plenty of large houses in the 09er zip with enough gardens, out buildings, pools, and the like to stretch for miles, but then Mac hadn’t been invited to all those places, only this one. Of all the people who she might have ended up socialising with, Dick was the last one she’d ever had suspected. Not only did the social divide separate them, but so did their varying degrees of intelligence, entirely difference senses of fashion, and opinions on just about anything as far as Mac could tell.

Still, this wasn’t about becoming friends or anything, she had enough of those already, including the latest addition to her small but perfectly formed social circle in the form of Veronica Mars. No, Dick Casablancas was a customer, in a sense, and a student in another. They were hardly destined to be best buds, Mac thought to herself, as she rang the doorbell, uncertain whether she was expecting Dick himself, a parent of some kind, or just a servant type - the latter appeared to be true.

“Er, hi.” She grinned at the severe looking man in a suit. “I’m here to see Dick, well, not see Dick in that way, he’s paying me... to teach him, tutor him, in Math and English and... yeah,” Mac stopped when she realised she was rambling like a crazy person at someone who couldn’t care less what she was saying anyway.

“Mr Casablancas is expecting you,” she was told snottily as she was ushered inside.

Mac was led through to what appeared to be one of many hybrid rooms, this particular one being part living room, part breakfast room or similar as far as she could tell, since it had an over-sized couch and TV on one side, and a table with chairs on the other. Since she was not instructed where to sit or even if she should, Mac hovered awkwardly in the middle of the room as the butler wandered off, presumably to tell Dick she had arrived.

‘Out of place doesn’t even begin to describe,’ the brunette thought to herself as she caught sight of herself in a large gilt-framed mirror that hung on the wall. The girl in the Dandy Warhols T-shirt with blue streaks in her hair was not the obvious choice for hanging out at the Casablancas residence, but in fairness this had not been Mac’s idea.

“Hey, you showed up,” Dick startled her as he came in from the opposite door, loud as ever with a grin on his face that was a little surprising to Mac since she was here to educate him, not for happy fun time!

“You didn’t think I’d show up?” she said with a slight frown, wondering what had given him that idea, though he apparently didn’t want to give her an explanation.

“Whatever,” he waved the comment away as if it were nothing, leading the baffled Mac over to the table. Since he sat down and stared over at her without making any moves to find books or even paper and a pen, Mac realised that she’d been right in her presumption that studying was not something Dick Casbalancas was overly familiar with.

“Okay,” she said, taking a seat beside him out of pure necessity. “So I guess we should start with trying to figure out exactly what you know and what you’re not so clear on,” she suggested as she arranged her books and papers on the table, putting a notepad in front of Dick and handing him something to write with.

“Whatever you say, teach.” He mock-saluted her with the pencil she’d just given him as he made a big deal of sitting properly in his chair like a good and attentive student.

Mac honestly wasn’t sure if he was being a sarcastic ass or if he really did want to learn. Either way, he was paying her (or at least he would be) and it was therefore worth her while not to make a big deal about his behaviour right now and try to get him to learn something.

“Um, let’s start with math,” she decided, since it was her personal strong point after computers. “Anything specific you’re having problems with?” she asked, leafing through pages of the text book.

“Uh, yeah.” Dick nodded until she looked over at him. “Pretty much the math,” he admitted, unashamedly and seriously, which brought on a sigh from his tutor.

“Okay...” she stretched out, opening the text book at a key page and pushing it in between the two of them on the table. “Let’s start from here,” she said, leaning over to point at the page in the text book. “How would you solve this problem?”

“With a calculator?” Dick suggested, the look on his face suggesting it was no joke, he really had no clue where to begin.

“No,” said Mac simply, as she realised this was going to be even harder than she’d anticipated, not that it was a bad thing necessarily since this taking longer and requiring more effort would at least result in more cash for her. “You don’t know anything about quadratic equations, do you?” she said, already knowing the answer before Dick gave a response.

“Do I look like a guy who knows quadratic equations?” he asked her, and she had to agree that he really didn’t.

“I guess not,” she said. “So Foil. F-O-I-L. That’s all it is,” she explained, tapping her hand on his notepad to indicate he ought to be writing this important information down. “First, Outside, Inside, Last,” she dictated, watching with slight amusement as

Dick concentrated hard on writing it all down in the best handwriting he could muster apparently. “Now listen up, because this is the basis upon which all algebra is based.”

* * *

“So, this problem,” Mac said, hoping against hope that something had sunk in as she pointed to the next question on the page of the text book. “What’s the first thing we do?” she asked Dick, who read the algebraic equation aloud as he wrote it on his paper.

“5x(7x+4)(7x-4). Okay, ignore the 5x... then F for first?” he asked tentatively, at which Mac smiled.

“Right,” she told him with a nod, and was amused by the grin that appeared on the blond’s face as he started to figure out his problem.

“So, 7x times 7x is 49x.”

“Squared,” Mac interjected when she realised he’d forgotten that part again, just as he had on every other problem they’d done - she tried not to get mad about it though, after all some people just had a block with these kind of things and he really had come on a lot today.

“Right, 49x squared,” Dick repeated as he wrote it down. “O for Outer... 7x times -4 is -28x, I for Inner... 7x times 4 is 28x, and L for Last... 4 times -4 is -16?” he finished off, looking to Mac for approval who smiled and nodded accordingly.

“That’s good, great,” she told him, proud of her teaching skills as well as Dick’s ability to learn, after all she’d started out here with very little hope of achieving anything major and yet she had him completing problems he knew nothing about a while ago with very little help. “So, you have 28x and -28x, so...?” she prompted.

“So one cancels out the other,” he said recalling what he’d been taught, “and that leaves... 5x(49x squared - 16)?”

“Right,” she said. “So now multiply the 5x by each of the values in the parenthesis,” she told him, waiting patiently as he looked thoughtfully down at the paper and finally came up with an answer.

Mac wasn’t sure if it was fear he was wrong that made him hand her the paper instead of stating the answer aloud or whatever but she took the offered sheet and smiled approvingly at the answer of ‘245x cubed - 80x’. Flipping to the back of the text book without a word, she showed him the calculations that should have been made and the correct answer, all of which matched Dick’s paper perfectly.

“Dude, that rocks!” Dick triumphtanly punched the air, simultaneously throwing his pencil across the table, feeling he was happy to be done with this now because he totally understood it. “How come it makes sense when you tell it?” he asked Mac curiously, since his teachers had been trying to teach him this for so long and yet it never meant anything to him at all.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, glad to see him so pleased with himself, if only because it would encourage him to try just as hard next time they had a lesson. “It’s not hard, maybe you just needed to be motivated,” she suggested, tidying up some of the papers and books they’d been using, just because she wanted something else to so.

It was weird just sitting there with Dick staring at her. Mac was usually so comfortable with guys, probably because most of her friends were good with computers and the majority of computer geeks tended to be male. Other girls didn’t really get her, expect maybe Veronica. Mac was so not the princess type, she had neither the money or the taste in fashion for it, and she wouldn’t ever want to either.

She was different and she liked to be so. It would seem that Dick liked her too if his next comment was to be taken seriously.

“You’re so cool,” he declared like he’d just realised it, which in truth he had.

09ers and non-09ers rarely had an excuse to hang out and usually didn’t get along at all. The fact that she and Dick had just spent... oh my God, three hours, Mac suddenly realised as she glanced at the clock on the wall, in good company, being pleasant to each other was a little weird, but it had been okay, til he started staring at her in that disconcerting way.

“I should really get going,” she said, stuffing her books into her bag without looking back at him. “My Mom will be wondering where I got too,” she lied, since she doubted her mother would 

“Wow, we’ve been studying that long?” Dick said, somewhat in awe as he checked his watch.

“Uh-huh, didn’t know you had it in you, huh?” Mac smiled as she glanced his way just briefly and swung her bag up on her shoulder.

“Nope.” He shook his head definitely as he got to his feet beside her, making Mac just a little self-conscious again as he towered over her. “Beav got the brains, I got the looks.” He smirked as he pointed at the family photograph on the wall as they headed towards the front door.

“So, why doesn’t he tutor you for free?” Mac asked curiously, knowing that she would certainly be expected to be there to help her brother out when he needed it in later years.

“When the parentals split he went to Europe with my Mom,” Dick explained, looking just a little sad Mac thought, though he was obviously trying to hide it. “He was always a momma’s boy.” He rolled his eyes, making it all seem like no big deal.

Dick obviously wasn’t Momma’s boy, or Daddy’s boy for that matter, Mac realised, in fact, she wondered if he was the way he was because his home life kind of sucked.

She complained about her own family and felt she had every right to do so, but at least they cared about her and wanted to spend time with her. This whole time, Mac had seen nothing of Mr Casablancas, and with Mrs Casablancas and her other son apparently on the other side of the world, Dick had to get lonely.

“So, you wanna stay to eat?” he asked suddenly, as if he’d read Mac’s mind and wanted to prove the theory in her brain to be right. “I was gonna order a pizza.”

“Thanks, but no,” she said quickly, deciding it was best not to complicate what ought to be a tutor-tutee relationship, besides conversation was bound to dry up in a matter of minutes between a surfer dude and a computer geek. “Like I said, my mom’s expecting me home,” she said, attempting a smile as she went towards the front door and he leant over her to unlock and open it.

“That’s cool,” he said, as he let her out of the house. “So, er, what do I like owe you or whatever?” he asked, making Mac feel even worse.

Not only had she said no to his invitation, she now had to take his cash for the time she had spent in his company.

“We’ll figure it out later,” she waved away the question. “You can pay me at the end of the week or something? I was thinking we could do this same time, same place, whichever days work for you? Of course we can put in extra time if you’re having problems with anything specific...” she started rambling and hated that she was doing so, which was probably why he was grateful when Dick actually interrupted her.

“Here,” he said, tossing a cell phone to her which she only just managed to catch before it hit the concrete driveway. “Slam your number in there, and I’ll call you,” Dick instructed as Mac looked wide eyed at the cell she could only ever dream of owning -she’d have to get her parents to re-mortgage to even have close to enough cash!

“All done,” she said eventually, passing the phone back to Dick who pushed it into his back pocket and leaned in the doorway looking down at her.

“Thanks, Mac. You’re an awesome teacher,” he said with a grin, as the poor girl fought the urge to blush.

“You’re not a bad student either,” she said bravely, before hurrying away to her car.

The whole experience this evening had left Mac feeling quite weird. Away from his friends and actually trying to listen and learn, Dick had proved himself to be quite a decent human being, and not entirely stupid.

Climbing into her car and dumping her bag on the passenger seat, Mac stared at herself in the rear view mirror and frowned.

“I just gave my number to an 09er surfer dude,” she said to herself. “What is up with the universe?”


	3. Chapter 3

Mac didn’t know how this was going to work. Tutoring Dick had seemed like a good plan, and their first session had gone even better than she ever could’ve imagined. He actually learnt something, which was a minor miracle but great. Now came the really awkward part - asking for the cash. Mac had thought it would be much simpler earning money from strangers than friends, but she wasn’t hugely comfortable asking anybody to hand over their funds. It would require delicate handling, even with a guy like Dick that was usually less than tactful himself.

A tap on the door gave Mac a reason to escape deep thought and she glanced up to see who was there.

“Someone here to see you, sweetheart.” Her mother smiled from the doorway, as a blonde head appeared from behind her.

“Hey, Veronica,” Mac greeted her friend as she came into the room.

“Hi,” came the response with a grin. “Er, would you believe this is a social call?” she tried though the awkward manner with which she said it screamed that was not true.

“This late in the evening, with your laptop under your arm?” Mac shook her head, pushing her hair back behind her ear.

She wasn’t buying it, and Veronica knew it as she sighed and sat down beside her friend on the bed. She held out her computer which Mac took, clearing her books aside.

“I’m sorry,” Veronica apologised, as she watched her open up the lid of the laptop. “I just got done with my English essay and bam!” she clapped her hands to emphasise the point. “Please tell me you can get it back,” she begged like a kid, making Mac smile.

“Most likely.” She rolled her eyes as she tapped away at the machine. “I’m just relieved you’re not here for study help, I’m all tutored out today,” she said without thinking as Veronica wandered over to the book shelf for something to do.

“Wait a second, you have other friends that require your help?” she said, turning suddenly and making Mac jump as she put her hand on her heart and over-acted. “I’m not the only one?” she said with added drama, trying not to laugh.

“Surprisingly, no,” Mac told her with appropriate eye-roll. “Though this isn’t so much a friend,” she said as she went back to the computer. “Dick Casablancas is paying me to be his tutor.”

“Dick Casablancas?” Veronica scoffed at the thought. “As in the epitome of dumb blond with a side of stupid?” she checked.

“I wasn’t going to be quite that harsh, but yes, the Dick Casablancas,” Mac confirmed, though she wasn’t so sure Veronica’s assessment was really fair.

Dick seemed to be trying hard enough during their tutoring session. Of course, he came off pretty loud and obnoxious and stupid in school, but clearly he wasn’t all that dumb or he never would have picked up the math so quickly.

“Why does he even want to learn?” Veronica considered, peering out of the window. “I thought he had that three point plan about living off his looks, his money, and his looks,” she reeled off as Mac turned to glance at her with a frown. “He counts looks twice because they’re so important,” she explained with a further roll of her eyes.

“I don’t know,” Mac admitted. “All I know is he has cash, he wanted a tutor, so I’m in.” She shrugged, wishing she was getting into Veronica’s computer so easily - unfortunately not.

“Did you manage to teach him anything?” her friend asked as she wandered across the room again and parked herself next to Mac, picking up the nearest text book and flipping the pages in a bored manner.

“Actually, yes.” The brunette nodded, as she moved to grab a CD-Rom from the shelf. “He’s really not as stupid as you’d think if you explain things properly,” she explained, popping the disc into the computer and starting over. “I had him solving quadratics inside one evening.” She smiled proudly, at which Veronica’s eyes went side.

“Dude!” she exclaimed in her best ‘Dick voice’. “He, like, got something?!” she said, in over-done surfer tones.

“That’s just mean,” Mac said, trying not to smirk, since she knew Veronica’s impersonation to be quite accurate really.

“I just don’t get why someone like Dick would want to learn.” The blonde frowned slightly, both at the idea of the guy becoming smart and also at the fact she herself could make head nor tail of the code that spun across her computer screen. “and isn’t it a little dangerous educating a wannabe-evil-genious?” she asked.

“Says the girl I saw hanging out with Logan Echolls,” Mac challenged her friend as she glanced back at her. “Who might already be an evil genius?”

“I’m working on a case for him is all,” Veronica said a little too fast. “Strictly a business deal,” she stressed, though in reality she knew a part of her was helping Logan track his mother down because there was still a piece of her heart that cared for him.

They were friends a long time, and despite all they’d said and done to each other since Lilly’s death, she couldn’t hate him completely. She got the feeling he had a similar problem with her. Besides they could never bug each other so much if they didn’t care at all.

“Same with me and Dick, strictly business.” Mac nodded once, a smile on her face as Veronica’s computer suddenly booted up to the desktop. “It’s not like I’m yearning to be accepted into the 09er crowd or something,” she said, passing the notebook to Veronica and parking it on her lap. “How lame would that make me?” She smirked at her triumph, as well as her comment.

Of course, nobody had suggested she was lame, and Dick certainly didn’t think so, he’d said she was cool. Still, as she’d told Veronica, she had no wish to hang out with 09ers and she certainly wasn’t interested in dating a guy like Dick, that would just be crazy.

* * *

“So, how goes it with the tutor, man?” Logan asked as his video game character kicked the ass of the one controlled by his good buddy, Dick.

“Dude, that is so not cool!” the blond complained as he attempted to fight back, thumbs going crazy on the console. “Yeah, I guess Mac is okay,” he threw in straight after. “Hey, check it out, I actually learned something today!” he said, looking weirdly proud of it, as Logan glanced from the TV screen to his friend and back.

“Geez, Dick, that’s kind of amazing,” he said with a smirk.

Sure, it was cool that his friend was learning stuff, but it was still weird that he even cared about it. Of course, Logan knew what it was to want a father’s approval. He had no doubt Dick cared a lot about his cut in allowance, but it would be cool for him to get a decent amount of attention out of Big Dick too. For Logan’s part, he’d rather not have his Dad’s attention, since nine times out of ten it meant he was getting beat on for something. It’d be cool to have him actually be proud of him for something, but he never was.

“Ha! That’s how it’s done!” Dick declared, making Logan realise he was not paying proper attention to the video game and had just been entirely quashed.

With a sigh he dropped the console onto the carpet in defeat, as his friend punched the air, victorious and ecstatic about it.

“As thrilling as learning to add without your calculator?” Logan smirked, only to have an empty potato chip packet tossed at his head.

“Hey, I learned quadratic equations today,” he said as he leapt up onto his bed, rifling around and tossing a notepad down to Logan who looked less than impressed by the calculations he read, whether they had correct answers at the bottom of not.

“Congratulations, Dick,” he dead-panned. “A chick taught you what you should have known last year.”

“Whatever, dude,” the blond complained. “It’s still cool that I got a babe to teach me instead of some retainer-wearing, four-eyed, geek-a-zoid!”

“True,” Logan agreed with a nod. “Speaking of babes, how come you don’t have a date with Madison tonight?” he asked, as he sorted through various video games in the attempt to find one that he hadn’t already overplayed and gotten bored of.

“She’s still being totally weird,” Dick told him as he tried to locate the phone. “I don’t get it, man, it’s like she just doesn’t want me around anymore, y’know, and I so totally deserve some action after this long!”

“I don’t think there’s a rule set in stone on how far you’re supposed to get based on how long you’ve dated.” Logan laughed at the idea, but his friend looked totally serious as he speed-dialled the pizza place.

“Well, there should be,” he said definitely, before the line connected to Cho’s Pizza and he put in his order. “I was gonna try and get Madison to go to the movies this weekend, see if I can get a little back row action,” he said when he was done with his call.

“And she said no?” Logan guessed, not really all that interested as he read the back of a game box, then tossed it aside with the rest.

“No, she said she wanted to go see some chick flick, which is not going to help me get any because every time I try anything she’ll just yell at me for interrupting some guy in the movie,” he complained. “Seriously, dude, I cannot see any more movies about fairytale chicks at a prom without turning into a girl.”

He sighed, flopping down on his bed and staring at the ceiling. Madison was becoming such a nightmare to get along with. Sure, she was hot as hell, but it was like sitting three feet from the Holy Grail and not being allowed to touch it without getting slapped. Besides, the two of them had less in common now than ever. Any movie he suggested was too dark or too lame, any place he wanted to eat wasn’t classy enough. On top of it all, she seemed almost embarrassed to be seen with him half the time. Part of Dick wondered if she was seeing someone else behind his back.

“Hey, daydreamer!” Logan snapped, knocking his friend on the head with his game console. “You playing or just lying around pining for your girlfriend?” he complained.

“Dude! Don’t damage the face!” Dick yelled as he turned into his stomach and faced the TV as the game started up.

“If you’re going to turn into the eighth dwarf, Mopey, I’m going to stop comin’ over,” Logan told him, “and if Madison is such a pain in the ass dump her already and be done”

Dick didn’t answer that, just concentrated on not getting his butt kicked in the computer game. He didn’t really want to be single. It sounded cool, playing the field and all, but as they got older a lot of the girls in school wanted something a little more serious with the guys they dated, and there was not a girl in their group that Dick could imagine getting into something long haul with. Most of them thought he was stupid anyway and wouldn’t want to get with him for that reason. Of course, Mac didn’t think he was stupid, she’d said he was a good student. Still, it wasn’t like he would ever date a girl like Mac, that would just be crazy.


	4. Chapter 4

Mac was just thinking about getting ready for bed when her cell started buzzing on the edge of her desk. Reaching for the phone, she frowned a little at the ‘unknown caller’ display and considered a moment whether she should answer or not. Curiosity got the better of her in a moment and she accepted the call, albeit apprehensively.

“Hello?” she said warily, pulling the phone quickly away from her head when a loud response came in her ear.

“Hey, Macster! What’s up?” Dick yelled cheerily.

“Er, nothing really,” she said, feeling awkward even though she knew it was dumb.

She’d given the guy her number, he said he was going to call about arranging their next study session, so God only knew why she was surprised to hear his voice on her phone. Maybe it was just the fact he was calling late on a Friday night that threw her. She guessed his kind were out partying by now.

“That’s cool,” he said, clearly not having heard what she said or just not caring for the words. “So, hey, I was thinking, since you got me all clued up on the math-”

“Well, we only had one session,” Mac interrupted. “There’s still a lot for you to learn,” she pointed out, something Dick literally waved away as unimportant though of course she couldn’t see it.

“Details, babe, and we’ll work on those later,” he told her. “Right now, this English assignment is whipping my butt,” he declared, as he tossed the papers across the table. “So you busy tomorrow, or you want to come help your fave student hammer out some Pride and Prejudice?” he asked her.

“Uh, well, I’m not really busy,” she admitted, sure that he knew as well as she did her weekends were much less social than his own might usually be. “At least, I have no plans I can’t change if you need help.”

“Awesome.” Dick nodded, grinning widely on the other end of the line. “So I was thinking sometime after noon. Who’s up before then anyway, right?”

“Right,” Mac agreed wholeheartedly, she may be what was considered by most as a geek but she wasn’t so focused she liked to be leaping out of bed at dawn to cram in extra homework and such.

“Then it’s a date,” Dick told her. “Which is more than I can get with my girlfriend these days so... whatever, you don’t care,” he said when he remembered who he was talking to, and practically smacked himself in the forehead for being so stupid.

“I don’t know,” Mac began in reply, not sure whether she was going to offer to play psychiatrist as well as tutor here or not, but she never got a chance to decide as Dick ploughed on, regardless of the fact she was trying to form a sentence.

“So, I was checking online what other guys pay for tutors,” he told her. “Dude, some people are just cheap!” he declared. “$10 an hour? My Dad pays the guy that cleans our cars more than that!”

“$10 an hour would be fine,” Mac said as she did a mental calculation and realised how much she could potentially earn each week.

“So, I’m thinking $20 is fair, just ‘cause you’re such a cool teacher and all,” he told Mac, as she blushed even though he was on the other end of the phone and not in the room.

“Well, thanks,” she said, not really knowing how to argue with the guy.

She risked insulting him if she tried to talk him down, and besides if what he said about the car cleaning guy was true, she was totally worth more than him, even if she shouldn’t be thinking of it that way. She was giving of the time and the brain, both important things. Besides, the Casablancas’ had so much cash, Mac wouldn’t be surprised to find they had a money bin, much like Scrooge McDuck, that Dick and his father went for regular swims in!

“Mac?!” her name shouted directly into her ear brought the brunette back from her thoughts to the conversation at hand.

“Yeah, sorry,” she apologised for having gotten so distracted. “Tomorrow around one, I’ll be there.”

“Cool,” Dick agreed. “See ya then, Macky Macster,” he said as he ended the call, and fell back onto his bed with a thud.

Staring up at the ceiling, Dick wasn’t sure why the thought of his tutor coming over tomorrow afternoon made him smile. Maybe it was just because she at least could be relied upon. Madison was a whole other story, she barely wanted him around and it was driving him nuts. He’d finally fixed a date with her for tonight, only to have her cancel last minute and leave him hanging out alone. Apparently, Kimmy was having a slumber party and all the girls just had to be there. Dick had pretended not to care, calling up Logan and hoping to party with his bro. Unfortunately, it would seem his friend was not at home and Dick really didn’t feel like going out and getting wasted alone... again.

Instead he’d picked up his homework, thinking maybe he ought to make a start on the essay he’d been set a week ago and still hadn’t started, despite the fact it was due in first thing Monday or else. This Jane Austen chick not only bored him but confused him. Despite being English, the woman just didn’t speak the language as far as Dick could tell. All the wherefores and such made his head spin, and as far as he could tell the whole book was a total chick flick disaster waiting to happen.

Mac was his only hope of making any sense out of it at all. She got As every time they wrote essays, at least, that’s what Duncan said. Dick didn’t usually pay enough attention in class to even notice that! All he knew was that without help he was destined for another F and that would get him nowhere with Daddy Dearest. Mac was like his geeky angel or something, sent down from nerd heaven to help him pass classes that had baffled him up to now.

* * *

“So basically, this is what I have so far,” Dick told Mac as he handed her a single piece of paper containing a few scribbled lines under the heading, ‘Discuss the development of the relationship between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.’

“Okay, first, I don’t think Darcy’s biggest reason for liking Elizabeth was because she’s a ‘smokin’ hottie’.” Mac frowned. “Secondly, question, is that an assumption you made because you didn’t actually read the book?” she checked, really hoping that her faith in her student was justified, and that he actually had at least attempted to read the material upon which he must now write a paper.

“I read some.” He shrugged, then off her disappointed look. “But hey, I know the whole story. I totally rented this British movie thing, way easier to spend five hours with the hot actress Bennett girls than reading about them in this crappy language, which hello, is not even English.”

“Actually the point is that it is English, the old kind,” Mac pointed out as she rescued the volume he’d thrown hazardly onto the table in front of them. “but the language isn’t even important right now.” She shook her head. “It’s about the story, which by the way is a classic.”

“Classic my ass.” Dick sighed, popping the top of his can of soda and drinking down half of it in one hit. “Boredom-fest is what I call it.”

“Did you call me here to help you learn or just to bitch about stuff, because I’m on a clock here, Cascablancas,” Mac suddenly snapped, not really sure where the words or harsh tone even came from.

In all honesty, that kind of thing was usually reserved for her brother when he was being a brat. That was when Mac realised why she’d snapped so easy. Dick was behaving like a spoilt child and had triggered that same reaction that her little brother always did. It was ridiculous for Dick to ask her over here to help him, paying her for time spent and duly wasted as he acted like an ass and didn’t even try to achieve anything. This had been going on for almost a half hour now and Mac couldn’t deal any more.

“Wow, way to lay down the law, teach.” Dick smirked, finding it kinda hot that she lost her temper that way, and beyond cute that she’d embarrassed herself into blushing a pretty pink all within a few seconds.

“Okay.” Mac took a breath and started over. “You must have some sensible ideas about the relationship in this book. Why do you really think Darcy and Elizabeth would be attracted to each other?” she asked him, daring the blond to say something stupid or make a mockery of her trying to help.

“I dunno.” He shrugged. “I guess she maybe liked him ‘cause he was rich?” he tried, though he looked unconvinced by his own words.

“Well, actually Lizzie was maybe the one person who wasn’t bowled over by Darcy’s fortune,” Mac told him. “Her family were, at least until he was rude to them, but not Lizzie,” she explained, trying to find something to make him see the situation more clearly. “Try it this way, Darcy is kind of like you guys, the 09ers. You all have cash and status, and that makes some people arrogant and overly proud,” she said carefully, mindful of getting into some kind of anti-rich kid tirade in this inappropriate time and place. “The Bennetts are like the rest of Neptune, the average people with their normal amounts of cash and stuff. Like the people here, some of the poorer people in the book strive to be richer, others like Lizzie don’t care so much, they think other stuff is more important.”

“What’s more important than money?” Dick snorted at the very idea that anything could be and Mac looked just a little surprised.

“You can’t think of anything?” she asked incredulously. “I mean, if you didn’t have cash, would it change how much you love, say, surfing? How good it feels to ride a wave?”

“I guess not,” the blond considered, thinking how smart Mac really was as he observed her over the rim of his Coke can. “But I still like money,” he said, sounding every bit as childish as he looked, rocking back on his chair even now.

“Not the point.” Mac rolled her eyes as she pushed the front of his chair to the carpet with a thud and pushed his pen and paper closer. “Let’s get back to the essay,” she suggested. “Now, given that Lizzie wasn’t interested in Darcy for his money and she didn’t have any for him to be drawn in by, what do you think attracted them to each other?”

“Well...” Dick considered it for a long moment. “She wouldn’t take any crap from him.” He smirked as he remembered a couple of parts in the movie that seemed kind of relevant. “She was way spunky and like the other girls were kissing his butt, which gets a little old after a while,” he said with an eye roll that Mac found amusing.

“That’s good.” She nodded. “Only we don’t want to be saying spunky in our English essay so lets try ‘spirited’ or ‘tenacious’.”

“Wow,” Dick exclaimed as he scribbled down what she was saying, getting a little stuck on the spelling of tenacious. “You’re like one of those books that knows smart words for normal words.”

“A thesaurus,” Mac filled in with a giggle. “Yeah, we should maybe get you one of those,” she considered, as she flipped some pages in Pride and Prejudice, trying to find some scenes that might help Dick out.

She didn’t notice that he was done writing now and just sitting there staring across at her. The blond hismelf wasn’t sure why he was doing it, why he found Mac so cool and pretty and all. Maybe he just needed a woman, since Madison was paying practically no attention to him lately. Still, he wasn’t just thinking about getting Mac naked, that thought honestly hadn’t crossed his mind... til now. She might be the first nerd he’d undressed in his head, and he liked what he saw in his minds eye.

“Earth to Dick!” a very fully-clothed Mac suddenly said, snapping her fingers in front of his wide eyes. “Are you concentrating at all? Because as much as I appreciate the cash incentive to be here, there’s no point if you’re not going to try,” she told him sharply.

“Okay, okay,” he held up his hands in mock-surrender. “No need to get all tenacious or whatever.” He smirked and she couldn’t help but smile herself as they got back to work.

* * *

“Write up all those notes in your best English,” Mac advised Dick as she gathered up her papers and books, “and you’re pretty much golden.” She smiled, quite proud of what the two of them had achieved.

Sure, it had taken almost the whole of the afternoon but it was worth it, not only because she would be getting paid handsomely for her trouble, but more so because she felt she’d actually achieved something today. Dick was learning, he was actually taking stuff in, and that made Mac strangely proud.

Dick didn’t dare tell her how he’d made such a breakthrough with Pride and Prejudice. She’d helped, she knew that much, but she didn’t really understand why and he didn’t think he should tell her. When they got to talking about the dynamics of one of Jane Austen’s greatest works (Mac’s words, not his) Dick came to realise just how accurate her comparison earlier had been. In the modern world he would be Mr Darcy, only less up his own butt, and Mac would be Elizabeth Bennett, not so much with the cash but spunky and cool and in no way willing to take his crap or anyone elses. That was perhaps his favourite thing about his tutor.

“So,” Dick said, stretching out his body like a cat and almost knocking himself off the chair. “I was thinking now we’re done with the study, I could use some physical exercise,” he told Mac who looked just slightly concerned as to where he was going with this. “You wanna check out the pool?” he asked her, as she let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.

“Uh, well, I didn’t bring a swim suit to a study session,” Mac said with a nervous smile as she stood up, pushing her books into her bag.

“Well, maybe you don’t need one.” Dick winked, the smirk on his face entirely suggestive and Mac really wasn’t loving how uncomfortable it made her feel.

“Some other time maybe,” she said quickly, heading for the door before Dick was even out of his chair.

He was an idiot, it was official, he decided, as he hurried after his tutor. Mac was cool and different, he should’ve known better than to make a suggestion like skinny dipping to her, but sometimes Dick just let himself run off at the mouth. He usually pretended he didn’t care what he said, but sometimes he did. Now was one of those times.

“Um, I guess this is what I owe you,” he said, feeling awkward on two levels now as he handed her some bills at the front door.

“Thanks.” Mac forced a smile and nodded once as she pushed the money into the front pocket of her jeans. “I’m glad it’s working, that you’re learning,” she said, eyes flitting to his grinning face and then the floor very quickly, before she practically ran out of the open door.

“I’ll call you!” Dick yelled behind her, almost stopping Mac dead in her tracks, but she was determined not to turn around whilst she still couldn’t control the blush that rose in her cheeks.

This was insane. It was supposed to be a simple tutoring job, but Dick had such an ability to embarrass her. He seemed able to make her at ease and uneasy all at the same time without even trying. It was the weirdest feeling, Mac thought, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it.

Of course, she had no idea that a similar dilemma was playing out in her students head. Dick stood leaning in the front doorway to his house, as Mac climbed into her car and headed off down the driveway. He couldn’t shift the grin off his face when she was around, and now she was leaving he just wanted to call her back immediately. He chalked it up to feeling lonely lately, what with Madison spending more time away from him than with him, and Logan distracted by family stuff. Mac paid attention to him, that was probably why he liked her so much. Any other reason seemed ridiculous, Dick thought, but he couldn’t shift the feeling that there was more to it than that.


	5. Chapter 5

“I’ll keep you posted, I promise,” Veronica said to Logan, the pair sharing a genuine smiled as he finally walked away, just as Mac approached from the other side.

“Lots of promises and big smiles,” Mac commented as she sat down beside Veronica, making her jump a little as she’d had no idea she was there. “What is it with you and Logan Echolls lately?” she asked, causing Veronica to roll her eyes.

“As I’ve told you now, several times, Logan and I are working together on a case,” she repeated what she knew her friend was already oh so very aware of. “He needs to know the truth about his Mom, and I totally understand that.”

“Me too,” Mac agreed with a nod as she picked at her lunch, “but you guys still seem a little more friendly than one usually would be with a client,” she said with a slight smile.

She could not be so wholly convinced that Veronica was doing this for the cash or even out of sympathy for the jackass that had made her life hell this past year or more. She knew how the two of them used to be good friends. Together with Lilly and Duncan Kane, they’d been the Fab Four that the whole school watched and most envied. Whether Veronica was willing to admit it or not, it had to be nice getting back to a little of the way things used to be.

“Spending time with Logan isn’t as awful as it might be,” she admitted eventually. “It is kind of the way it used to be, only so much has happened... I don’t know.” She sighed, giving up on the whole thing much as she had done every time she’d started up the same thought process in her own head.

Mac wasn’t the only one to notice how comfortable she and Logan seemed, but Veronica couldn’t help it. Before Duncan broke up with her, before Lilly died, things between herself and Logan had been so good. They were such good friends in those good old days and losing him had been as hard as losing either of the Kanes. She wondered if he suffered like she did, if he was trying to make her miserable for the same reason she enjoyed making his life difficult. If they were hurting each other, they didn’t have to worry about their own pain and loss.

“Speaking of spending time,” she said, snapping right out of her daze when she realised that sometime during her staring at Logan he’d started staring back at her. “How goes it with the tutoring, dude?” she joked as she looked across at Mac who rolled her eyes and swallowed her mouthful of food.

“We’re actually doing really well,” she said smartly, genuinely proud of what the both of them had achieved.

Dick couldn’t be as dumb as he seemed, she’d always thought he was until they started studying together. Now, Mac realised that, like most people, Dick just needed someone to bother to teach him in a way he understood. Clearly the teachers didn’t try hard enough with him, although Mac suspected he rarely if ever asked for help. Dick acted out because it was easier than admitting he didn’t understand something, she was certain of it. He even tried it in their study sessions sometimes, being an ass and bugging her when he didn’t get it right away. When she finally found a way to explain it where it made sense, he actually behaved like a human being and achieved something. That helped Mac feel less awkward about taking his cash at the end of the evening.

“I’m amazed he doesn’t drive you crazy before you have a chance to teach him anything,” Veronica was saying when Mac tuned back into the conversation from daydream world.

“Dick’s okay.” She shrugged. “We got past the awkward of him paying me, and I’m adjusting to the fact that he likes to flirt... a lot,” she said, going slightly pink just thinking about some of the stuff he’d said to her that might have been taken as entirely suggestive.

As it was, she’d taught herself over the past couple of weeks to just ignore those things he said. She even had more control over how red in the face she went when he made comments that were not usually aimed her way. The relationship was strictly tutor-tutee, not even a friendship really, though she could deal if it was, she thought.

“Mac, I should warn you,” Veronica said seriously. “And I so don’t want you to take this in the wrong way because you know how cool I think you are but... Dick will come on to anything with boobs and a pulse,” she said, not really sure how else to put it and hoping Mac wouldn’t be offended by the suggestion that Dick didn’t really like her so much as he liked women in general.

“Veronica, I’m not stupid.” Mac smiled. “I know Dick is kind of player, especially since Madison started messing him around, but I’m-”

“Hold on a sec,” Veronica interrupted, holding up her hand in the general signal for ‘hold it right there’. “Please tell me you know this by some psychic power? Tell me Dick doesn’t talk to you about his love life?” she checked, looking appalled.

“We talk about all kinds of things, Veronica.” Mac laughed lightly at her friends expression. “It’s just... normal,” she said after a moments consideration. “You can’t spend hours in another persons company only talking constantly about school work. Once in a while other stuff comes up,” she explained. “His girlfriend, his friends, my friends, TV shows, y’know? Just all kinds of stuff.”

“Uh-huh.” Veronica nodded dumbly, trying to figure out how anyone with a personality and a brain like Mac could hold a decent conversation with a guy like Dick.

It wasn’t that he was a bad person as such. He was kind of an idiot, let his mouth and occasionally his hands run away without his brain kicking into gear, but he was mostly harmless. If he was willing to learn and willing to pay Mac for teaching him, that was cool. Veronica just couldn’t quite wrap her head around the concept of the two of them hanging out quite like the seemed to be.

“Anyway,” Mac continued. “Dick did great yesterday in his pop quiz in math, passed it with flying colours.” She grinned proudly. “And later today, we find out how his English essay went down with Mr Reynolds,” she explained. “Apparently his last attempt got a D- so the only way is up, right?”

“I guess so.” Veronica nodded, unable to keep from smiling as she found Mac’s own proud grin infectious suddenly. “Dick the Scholar. Who knew?” she said with a shake of her head as the two girls stared across the quad at the 09er table.

Unfortunately, they were immediately noticed by Dick who, on spotting the fact he was being watched, threw a little wave in the direction of his tutor. She looked confused for a minute before returning the gesture then getting back to her food and her conversation with Veronica Mars.

“Who are you waving at like a twelve year old girl?” Casey asked the blond with a smirk on his face.

“Shut up, man!” was Dick’s neathanderthal response. “It’s none of your damn business, but that’s Mac. She’s my tutor and she’s cool, okay? For a geek,” he added the last part like an after-thought, ensuring the guys didn’t get the wrong idea, thinking he really liked someone like Mac.

“You pay to spend time with her?” Cole looked somewhat unimpressed as he followed the other guys’ gaze across the quad. “I don’t get it.”

“C’mon, man, look how hot she is,” Luke threw in, staring over at Mac. “She could teach me all night.”

“Hey, a little respect for my friend, huh?” Dick snapped, thumping the other boy in the arm, a little too hard.

Logan watched the exchanged and frowned. Lately Dick talked about Mac a lot, and now he was getting all knight in shining armour when it came to protecting the lady’s honour. If he didn’t know his good buddy so well, he’d seriously think he cared about the girl with blue streaks in her hair. As it was, Dick and Mac were perhaps the most mis-matched couple ever in the history of dating, so it couldn’t be true.

“You wanna be careful, Casablancas,” Casey warned him, apparently making a similar observation to Logan’s own, but sure enough to voice it. “Getting all protective over another woman? Madison won’t like it.”

As if he’d done it on purpose, and Logan thought maybe he had, Casey’s words were timed to perfection as Madison strutted over, arriving right behind Dick and scowling down on him.

“What won’t I like?” she asked snippily. “Dick, what did you do now?” she sighed tiredly, honestly sick of his stupid boyish antics.

She needed a man, a real man who knew how to treat her right. Of course, she had one of those but was unable to tell the world as yet. It would do neither his nor her reputation any good, and so their affair was to be kept secret a while longer. That meant keeping up the ruse that she and Dick were still an item. She’d considered telling him she didn’t care for him anymore and asking him to fake a relationship but Dick was too simple of that. Easier just to pretend to date him without telling him, and keeping him at arms length when he wanted to get physical. So far it was working quite well.

“I didn’t do anything!” he protested, and Madison then looked around his friends for a response - Logan caved first.

“It’s nothing, Mad.” He shook his head. “Casey was just saying maybe Dick should be careful and not get a crush on his tutor,” he explained, pointing across the quad where Veronica and Mac sat still deep in conversation.

“The computer geek?” she scoffed, apparently finding it laughable that any boyfriend of hers, fake or otherwise, would be at all interested in that girl. “Get all the crushes you want if it’s on fashion-deprived ghosts like her,” she said nastily as she sat down beside her so-called boyfriend.

That was when Dick really lost it. He was getting so sick of Madison’s attitude. Sure, she was hot and getting somewhere with her would be awesome, but lately he barely got to kiss her cheek without her squirming away and complaining, and they hadn’t been on a real date in forever. Now she was starting in on a person who had done her no harm and who was fast becoming a good friend to Dick as well as the best tutor he could ask for.

“You know what, Madison?” he said as he got to his feet. “You’re such a bitch,” he snapped, making her eyes go wide and her mouth drop open. “Seriously, if you weren’t hot nobody would even talk to you, and if you don’t care who I date that’s cool because as of now we’re done!” he told her, much to the astonishment of the 09er crowd. “And you know what else? Maybe I do like Mac. In fact, I’m gonna go ask her out right now!” he said definitely as he stormed away from the table, to the applause of a few who had been wishing somebody would put Madison Sinclair in her place like that for a long time.

Neither Mac nor Veronica had really noticed the commotion across the quad, after all there was always some commotion happening at the 09er table, and it rarely if ever was anything that might concern them. The first they knew of anything odd going on was a Dick-shaped shadow falling over their table, causing them both to look up at him oddly.

For a full minute Dick just stood there staring. He ought to just do what he said, ask Mac out and to hell with Madison and his friends, but he couldn’t. Whenever he got flirty with Mac she got all weird with him or just ignored it completely. Sure that was probably because she was the shy type but it could also mean she just wasn’t interested. Getting shot down when he knew everybody was watching, that wasn’t something Dick liked the idea of. Besides which, if he asked her now it’d be for all the wrong reasons, even a dummy like him knew that.

“Did you want something, Dick?” Veronica asked eventually when it appeared nobody else was going to speak.

“Er, yeah,” he answered with a shake of his head as he attempted to clear the weird fog that had settled over his brain. “Uh, so, are we all about the math tonight?” he checked with Mac.

“Sure, yeah.” She nodded her immediate agreement. “I’ll come over around six?”

“Awesome,” Dick agreed as he backed away from the table, pointing at her as he added loudly. “It’s a date,” as he glanced over at the 09er table, flipping off all the guys and Madison that had led him to take on an unspoken challenge here.

Of course, he hadn’t really asked Mac out on a date, but they didn’t need to know that right now, or at all actually. Dick wasn’t entirely sure why he’d bottled out of asking her, though he had a few possible reasons. Something inside him just said ‘don’t do it’ and he’d actually listened for once. That didn’t mean he was any the less confused as he went into the school building and out of sight.

Veronica watched him go, glanced towards the 09er table and then stared at Mac.

“What?” she checked, her hand going to her face, mindful she might have food stuck on it or something.

“Why do I get the feeling there was more to that than a simple study date?” the blonde said thoughtfully, causing her friend to stare after Dick with a frown on her face.


	6. Chapter 6

Mac felt a little self-conscious as she sat in her English class, trying not to look at Dick. The main reason for her avoidance was Veronica and her crazy theories. The blonde seemed to have got it into her head that there was much more to the tutor-tutee relationship than there actually was and Mac’s imagination had kind of gone off on a road of its own after that. She didn’t think about Dick that way, though obviously he had the whole cute surfer dude thing going on. She liked guys who could actually think for themselves, thank you very much, and whilst the young Mr Casablancas might not be quite the dumb blond that he acted, he was still kind of a sheep. The 09ers ran with the pack, or more accurately, the herd. They did the same things as each other, wore the same clothes, hung out in the same places, it was just the done thing. Mac liked to think of herself as an individual, in a much bigger way than any of the 09ers could boast.

That was her main reason for not even considering Dick as date material, though there were a whole list of other things following hot on the heels of it. There was the fact that 09ers, and teenage boys in general truth be told, tended to swim in the shallow end of the pool. Mac was good looking enough, she thought, but hardly what one might consider ‘a hottie’. As far as she understood it, the preferred adjectives for such a girl were busty, leggy, blonde, and easy. Mac was none of those things and whilst that suited her fine, she was sure it would not work for Dick.

Then came the fact they were very different in school status and from very different backgrounds, which wouldn’t bother Mac at all, but she knew damn well it would make a difference to him. He dated girls like Madison, which was actually pretty ironic given the whole switched at birth deal, Mac thought with a wry smile to herself. If the world had panned out like it should, she would be dating Dick, and Madison would be his tutor, wondering why the hell he was constantly looking her way and grinning!

Mac was starting to get a little embarrassed, until the end of class drew near and Mr Reynolds started talking about English essays. Of course, the paper, that was why Dick kept grinning at her, Mac realised. Today was the day they got their grades for the essays they’d written, the one they had worked on together about Pride and Prejudice. She’d known this, she even told Veronica about it, but her mind had gone into a spin and then entirely blank just as soon as the blonde made it clear she thought Dick had developed a crush on his tutor.

Her mind a little easier when she realised the smiling at her was merely gratitude for help and pride at the better grade Dick was certain he was destined for, Mac settled down in her seat, even looking the way of her tutee and sending a smile right back at him.

“Mr Kane, excellent work, as always,” Mr Reynolds said as he dropped the paper onto Duncan’s desk and the boy grinned at the sight of his usual A. “Miss Mackenzie, I expected nothing less,” he continued, passing her essay back to her, also bearing the grade of A. “Mr Casablancas.” He sighed as he came by the boys desk, planting a hand on his shoulder. “I will see you about your grade after class,” he said sternly, causing a frown on both the surfer’s face and Mac’s too.

The bell rung before either of them could say a word and the class was dismissed. Mac wanted to hang back and see what happened between the teacher and Dick but she knew he wouldn’t say a word til she was gone. Instead she gathered her things and left with the rest of the class, but stopped just beyond the door, leaning against the wall and trying in vain to hear what was said inside the classroom. As her classmates moved away, she realised she stood a little more chance of successful eavesdropping than she might’ve it this wasn’t the last class of the day.

“Now, Mr Casablancas,” she heard the English teacher begin, and peaking around the door she saw him sat behind his desk, hands behind his head as Dick shifted awkwardly in front. “I have to say your essay made very interesting reading.”

“Is that in the good way or the not-so-good way?” his student asked with an attempt at a smile, not really sure how to take this whole ‘see me after class’ thing.

This usually only happened to him when he didn’t bother to submit a paper, but this was his best one yet, thanks to Mac. Dick had so been hoping for a good grade, not even an A really, just a B or even a C+ would have been cool. So far it appeared he’d earned nothing but a sneer from his teacher, and that didn’t thrill him at all.

“You’re work has improved so remarkably, Mr Casablancas, I hardly know what to make of it,” Mr Reynolds told him, and Mac winced at those words.

She knew what he thought, knew exactly now. Dick had done so well now he was applying himself and getting the proper help that he needed with his studies, he’d got too good too fast. Mr Reynolds could hardly believe the essay he’d received was written by the same person as the earlier attempts he’d seen, and said as much as she listened some more.

“I’m going to give you one chance, Dick, to tell me the truth,” he said sternly, sitting forward in his chair and resting clasped hands on the desk. “Who wrote this paper for you?” he asked, holding the essay in his hand, a circled B- in the top right corner.

The grin wouldn’t shift off Dick’s face at the sight of his much improved grade, being as it was he’d never got better than a D in this class before now. Unfortunately, Mr Reynolds didn’t appreciate the sunny disposition of his student, only wanting an answer to his very simple question. This Dick soon realised and tried to be straight-faced as he replied.

“I cannot tell a lie, sir,” he said flatly. “I wrote it.”

Mr Reynolds took in a breath and blew it out slowly.

“I gave you a chance,” he said regretfully as he tossed the paper on his desk and got to his feet. “You chose not to take it-”

“Yes, he did,” came a sudden interruption and two pairs of surprised eyes turned to look at Mac as she appeared in the doorway.

Honestly, even the girl herself was surprised she’d done it, just walked in on a private conversation, proving she had been listening in by answering what was being said, and even going so far as to interrupt a teacher. This was not the way Cindy Mackenzie was know to behave and she was more shocked than anybody at what she was doing. Still, she would not see an injustice done, would not allow Dick to be accused of cheating when all he’d really done was try to be a better student, whatever his reasons for that might be.

“Miss Mackenzie, this is a private conversation,” the teacher snapped at her and she nodded that she understood, continuing to head on over to the desk anyway.

“I know, and I’m sorry, sir,” she apologised immediately, “but Dick is telling the truth, he did write the paper himself.”

“Should I ask how you know this?” Mr Reynolds asked her, only for Dick to interrupt this time instead.

“She’s only like the best tutor ever!” he declared, throwing an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer, almost knocking poor Mac off her feet in the process. “And check it out Macster, we totally got me a B.” He grinned, grabbing his essay off the desk and waving it under her nose.

“That’s great, Dick.” She smiled awkwardly, pulling from his grasp and straightening herself out as she faced the teacher again. “Mr Reynolds, Dick has decided to apply himself to his studying and I’ve been helping out. There was no cheating, I swear,” she told him, uncertain at first if he believed her.

Mr Reynolds stared at the girl for a long moment and then at the boy who was grinning still. They looked genuine, at least, Miss Mackenzie did, and the teacher had no real reason to suspect her. She seemed uncomfortable enough beneath Dick’s arm that it was unlikely she was dating this clown and acting as alibi for his cheating. No, she must really be helping him to learn.

“Very well.” He nodded once. “Since I find it highly unlikely that Miss Mackenzie would come to your aid for any purpose but assisting your education, I’ll accept that this is your own work,” Mr Reynolds prodded the paper that Dick clutched in his hand.

“Hey, time to face the truth, dude.” The blond shrugged his shoulders. “When Dick puts his mind to it, he got the mad English skills,” he said with a little dance that would have made Mac laugh were it not for the fact they were in front of an unimpressed teacher who had just insulted Dick in such a way that the words had sailed completely over his head without him noticing their malice at all.

“Okay,” she said after an awkward moment, grabbing Dick by the sleeve and heading for the door. “Thanks, Mr Reynolds,” she called over her shoulder as they left at last.

Dick was still grinning as they got into the hallway and he waved his essay in her face once again.

“Check it, Macster, I am officially a genius,” he said with glee.

“Not quite Shakespeare yet, Dick,” she told him with a wry smile, “but very good. Let’s hope the Math homework goes as well tonight,” she said as she turned to walk away.

“Hey,” he called after her, running a couple of steps to get to her side once again.

When she turned and they faced each other, Dick completely forget what he’d wanted to say, or rather, his mouth just forgot how to form the words in order for him to say it.

After his argument with Madison and the guys at lunch, he couldn’t help but think about Mac a little differently. Obviously he knew she was hot, in that geeky kind of way that was hard to understand. Still, he hadn’t really seriously considered the idea of dating a girl like her until now. It was nuts because they were supposed to be so different, and yet when they talked they actually had some stuff in common, everything from movies to music to computer games. She had a cute laugh and when she got shy or embarrassed it was just adorable to Dick. Now the expression on her face was pure confusion as she stared up at him, baffled by the fact he’d called for her attention and was now saying nothing.

“Um, Dick?” she prompted when he was silent far too long. “Did you have something in particular to say because I really have to get home.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I had something.” He nodded, as he rolled his paper up in his hands, some kind of weirdly nervous habit it seemed to Mac though she couldn’t imagine what had got him so flustered. “Thanks, Mac.” He smiled then, leaning in to kiss her cheek before heading off down the hall at some speed.

Mac was left to stare after him wondering what the hell just happened. Gratitude from her student was one thing but this was just getting a little weird. It might have brought her some comfort to know that Dick was suffering from just as much confusion as she was. When he got outside the school building, he slunk around a corner out of sight, and faked slamming his head against the brick wall.

“I am such a dork!” he said to himself, since nobody else was around to hear.

Turning to lean his back against the wall, Dick opened up his essay and read the grade once again, unable to resist grinning at the sight of it. He never knew he was capable of being smart like this, not that he was even close to being as smart as Mac but his Dad would still be proud of him, at least Dick thought he should be. He had hoped Mac would be a little more proud than she was, after all it was because of her he’d come this far and this was only the beginning.

Mac was acting weird today, at least Dick thought so, but he could hardly call his own behaviour normal. The guys had made him think about things, about how much he liked his little tutor. He couldn’t date her, not really, it would never work. The chances were she only dated other brains, if she dated at all. With a sigh Dick realised that being smart was hard work. All this thinking, academic and otherwise, was starting to make his brain hurt today, and there was only one cure for that.

“I need a drink,” he said to himself as he headed across the parking lot to his car, apparently forgetting all too quickly that Mac would be arriving at his house in a couple of hours for their latest study session.


	7. Chapter 7

Mac was a little surprised when the door to the Casablancas house opened and she realsied it was Dick himself standing there. Her surprise was nothing though in comparison to the levels of drunk to which he was striving and achieving, at only six in the afternoon.

“Hey, Macster!” he yelled joyfully, throwing an arm around her shoulders and practically dragging her inside, slamming the door shut behind her. “I am so psyched you’re here! Come join the party!” he told her, loud enough for her to have heard if she was a mile away, and yet she was squished up right next to him.

For a horrible moment, Mac actually thought there might be a party occurring at Dick’s house. There shouldn’t be, given that she’d come here for a study session, but there was no telling what was happening right now either in the Casablancas house or its young resident’s mind. Mac lurched along with Dick into the usual living room and was relieve to find it empty of people until they themselves arrived. Slipping out from under his arm at last, Mac turned to face her tutee with a face like thunder.

“What is going on, Dick?” she practically demanded to know, unsure where her confidence to get so mad at him came from.

She guessed she was royally pissed at him because he had been doing so well and was now making a mockery of the tutoring that had helped him achieve so much. Mac had snapped at him before but never with quite so much force or so fierce a look in her eyes. She had no idea of the effect she was having but Dick had never wanted a woman more.

“You’re real sexy when you get angry,” he practically leered at her as he downed the rest of his beer from the bottle that had been dangling from his hand this whole time, and then belched loudly.

Mac was too angry to even blush at the words he used to describe her and considered just walking out of here right now. Unfortunately, she wasn’t that kind of person. She was the caring type, when it came to her friends at least, and that was what Dick had become these past few weeks. It was an odd kind of friendship to say the least but it was a friendship none the less. Something had caused Dick to go from joyful achiever to leering drunk in the space of the last few hours, and Mac intended to find out what that was. Celebration of his grade might have been an option were it not for the fact that this kind of drinking, as she understood it, was done in company and not alone. This was the drowning sorrows kind of drunk and though she knew she’d probably regret turning a maths tutoring session into a therapy session, she did it anyway.

“Okay.” She sighed, tossing her book bag onto the couch and then looking for the door she thought might lead to some kind of kitchen area or any place with coffee at all.

“Hey, where are we going?” Dick stumbled after her, tossing his empty aside as he went.

Mac didn’t answer, she would have if she couldn’t’ve found what she was looking for, but she walked into a kitchenette type of a thing in just two turns and immediately started searching for a good source of caffeine.

“Yahtzee!” she declared as she stumbled on a concealed coffee machine all ready to go when she flipped the switch.

“You want a beer?” Dick asked, and she turned to find him practically standing in the nearby refrigerator, pulling out two bottles.

“No,” Mac said firmly as she walked over, and squeezed herself between him and the appliance, “and neither do you,” she told him, replacing the bottles from his hands into the fridge and closing the door.

It was only when she turned around, her back against the refrigerator door, that Mac realised quite how close together she and a rather drunken Dick Casablancas were.

‘Houston, we have a problem,’ she said inside her head, at least she hoped it was a thought rather than a verbal. She wasn’t entirely certain what the weird look on his face was all about but given that drunk guys usually either got sick or handsy, Mac was not about to stick around and find out.

“Ooh, coffee’s almost ready,” she said with a nervous smile as she slipped away and across the kitchen to what she considered was relative safety.

Leaving would have been so the better option, but Mac knew staying here with Dick was the right thing to do. He had no mother or brother anymore, his father didn’t seem to care, and though there ought to be dozens of servants around the place, she’d seen not a one yet. It would be entirely irresponsible to leave Dick here alone where he might pass out and hit his head or something similar. She was doing a good deed, like Veronica was with Logan. There was nothing to read into the situation at all, she told herself, even now as she glanced across the kitchen and saw Dick was staring at her again.

“Coffee,” she muttered to herself as she went back to pouring out two cups of the hot black liquid.

Mac added a liberal amount of sugar to her coffee, leaving Dick’s as it was as she moved to sit at the small table in the middle of the room. Gesturing for Dick to do the same, he was soon there before her, half-falling into the seat opposite with a thump. He eyed the cup of coffee on the table with suspicion and distaste.

Coffee was not Dick’s favourite thing, especially black, and he really only drank it when he had a hangover but absolutely had to get sober. Now was not one of those times so he didn’t want it, not at all. Unfortunately, Dick wasn’t so very drunk that he’d lost all his good sense, he was aware enough to know that he was going to royally piss off Mac if he didn’t drink his coffee. Since she was the only person who seemed to give a damn about him at all right now, he’d make the effort.

Mac watched as Dick picked up the steaming mug of coffee with both hands and took a gulp. He reacted with distaste, which she had pretty much expected, but grossed out Dick was preferable to drunk Dick as far as she could tell. She sipped at her own drink, watching the blond over the rim of her mug, until he’d finished most of his own coffee, then she spoke up.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asked him, trying for sympathetic and friendly.

Mac didn’t really do this kind of thing. She had friends, but not the kind that got wasted and/or needed to spill their guts to her. Her so-called computer geek buddies really only talked to her about technology, and she didn’t have a whole bunch of girly friends. Veronica was the closest Mac had to that, and though they did share semi-private things and all, she’d never been in quite this situation with the PI’s daughter, at least, not yet.

“Talk about what?” Dick asked with a sigh as he sat back in his chair, not looking so great.

“Why are you drunk and alone in your house at six in the afternoon?” she asked him simply, not bothering to mention the study session that was now clearly not going to happen.

Right now math problems were clearly the least of Dick’s concerns though Mac couldn’t figure out why. When she’d last seen him he was all joy and rapture about his great English grade and psyched about tonight’s tutoring session. Okay, so there had been that one weird moment in the hall when he’d seemed a little odd, but Mac had come to realise Dick was just like that sometimes. Sometimes she thought she was learning as much about the real Dick Casablancas as he was learning about Math and English! Well, maybe...

“My Dad is working late, a bunch of the staff are sick,” he explained all of a sudden, knowing the alone part was Mac’s lesser concern but it was much easier to explain than the drunk.

There were a bunch of reasons, everything from Madison being a bitch, to his friends ragging on him, and most importantly of all, the undefined feelings Dick had inside of him all connected to Mac. As far as Dick could tell, you dated girls for only four reasons - big boobs, long legs, sex, and love. The first three were most important to him, seeing as the fourth was something for old people and losers. He was young, free and single and wanting to date as many hot women as he could. He’d stuck with Madison quite a while in an attempt to nail her, but that wasn’t happening.

So, now there was Mac, and whilst she was hot in her own way, Dick didn’t want her simply because of her figure that she hid most of the time anyway, or what she might be able to do with it, since he doubted she was anywhere close to the most experienced girl in the world. That left one reason why he might want to get close to her, and there was no way Dick could be in love. That left him trying to figure out what the hell kind of control she had over him, and when he couldn’t figure that out after several beers, he’d started thinking on how pointless it was to like her anyway.

Dick’s problem was paradoxical, though of course he didn’t possess the vocabulary to know it. He’d employed Mac to tutor him because she was one of the smartest chicks at Neptune High. Now he was getting these feelings for her and she was one of the few women who might just be intelligent enough to reject him if he made any kind of move.

Sure there was a chance he’d get lucky, that she’d fall for his obvious good looks and a little of the old Casablancas charm. That would bring with it a whole other set of problems for Dick. He’d be a laughing stock if he showed up at school or any 09er event with a computer geek on his arm. He knew the heckling he’d have to endure because on too many occasions before this he’d been chief heckler of other poor students who’s only crime was to date someone from a different clique or worse a different social status.

“Dick, you’re starting to scare me a little now,” Mac admitted, her hand landing on his arm and catching his attention more than her words did.

She’d brought him back to reality, at least she thought so as his formerly glazed-over eyes suddenly snapped open to meet her own gaze.

“I’m cool,” he said then with a smile Mac supposed to be entirely fake, after all crazy drunk and starey to ‘cool’ in under a minute seemed unlikely.

“Are you sure?” she asked, retracting the hand she barely realised had crept across the table.

Dick didn’t remark on the contact, or loss of same, just pulled his hand back off the table too before he answered her.

“Sure, I’m sure.” He grinned. “Sorry, I guess I got a little... y’know.” He shrugged, making some random gesture near his head that Mac wasn’t sure whether to interpret as drunk, thoughtful, or all out crazy.

“Okay,” she said, for lack of a better word, as she got to her feet, taking the empty coffee cups over to the sink for something else to do.

“Hey,” Dick’s voice behind her startled Mac so much she was glad the cups were not still in her hands as she turned to face him. “I’m kinda not in a study place right now but, er, you wanna hang out?” he asked, shifting in his seat, almost as if he was afraid to ask her or perhaps just scared of what her answer might be.

“I guess I could,” said Mac thoughtfully not sure if she was really making a sensible decision.

With Dick in his current state, she wasn’t really comfortable with leaving him alone and it wasn’t as if she hadn’t planned to be here anyway. Whatever he had planned was bound to be a million miles from studying but so long as it wasn’t anything outrageous like skinny dipping Mac figured she could deal.

“You wanna see my games station?” Dick was grinning like a kid as he got to his feet. “Computer chick like you should go wild.”

“Okay.” She nodded unable to suppress a giggle at his sudden enthusiasm as they headed towards his room.

What Mac didn’t know was that the smile on Dick’s face was still at least partially fake. He figured his only hope right now was to be friends with Mac. That way he could work up to the idea of dating her, and at the same time hopefully convince his friends she was cool enough for him to want to be with. It may be it wasn’t the smartest plan in the whole world, but it was Dick’s plan, and for now he was going to stick with it.


	8. Chapter 8

It would have been a strange sight to an outsider, perhaps even more strange than Dick Casablancas having Cindy Mackenzie for a tutor. At least that made some sense, his paying her to teach him, since she was smart and he was less so. This was different now, this was like they were friends, sat on pillows from his bed in front of a game-station with every possible kind of game. Right now, Mac was putting up a pretty good fight in this particular game despite having never played it before, and Dick was actually quite impressed by her natural ability to smack down via the console.

“You’re pretty good at this,” he told her with a grin, feeling much better than he had prior to the drinking that had taken place. “Y’know, for a chick,” he added, smirking as he glanced her way and saw her eyes go comically wide.

“Oh, you are so going down for that!” Mac declared as she concentrated hard on the game and bringing down the opponent that up to now she hadn’t been too bothered about defeating.

This was surprisingly fun, hanging out with Dick. She’d never really considered it before, their relationship was purely tutor/tutee, despite the suggestions Veronica had made. The idea of Mac and Dick being anything but study buddies seemed absurd and yet they were getting to be friends now, as bizarre as it seemed. Dick liked the change, though he didn’t say anything about it. Getting drunk earlier had been kind of dumb, and he ought to have known it, he’d done it before and regretted it later. Still, up until now there had been no-one there to really care if he got wasted or whatever. Mac cared, and that was just weird because he didn’t think for a second that she would be the one to get it, to accept him for being human. In front of his friends, he was big dumb blond Dick. That was what was expected of him and he delivered every school day, at every party, always. Sometimes Dick just wanted to chill and be a person, even be serious about something, but nobody was going to understand that, except maybe Mac apparently.

“I think the word is ‘ownage’,” the girl in question said suddenly with glee as she won the game spectacularly.

Dick would’ve been impressed if not for the fact he knew it was only his distracting thoughts that had let her defeat him. This was one of the games he was best at, even though he’d let Mac think she chose it at random with her eyes closed, he’d ensured her hand landed on the game he could most easily beat her at. It wasn’t quite as simple as he thought perhaps but he had been winning, until his brain ran away on an unchartered course.

“Awesome, dude.” He smiled when he saw how pleased Mac was to win, offering a high five which she duly accepted. “But hey, it’s not over yet,” he said, moving to restart the game, stopping just short when Mac checked her watch and gasped.

“Actually, Dick, it kind of has to be,” she said, feeling genuine disappointment. “Have you seen a clock recently?” she asked when he also looked a little sad. “We’ve been playing for hours,” she said, gesturing to the neon clock on the wall that told Dick it was true.

“Woah,” he declared, a little stunned, not least because he’d never spent quite so long alone with a girl without reaching second base at best!

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” said Mac as she got to her feet and stretched out her muscles that had cramped some from being in the same position on the floor for so long.

She set about collecting up her things then, her bag and abandoned books, whilst Dick moved to shut off his games console. Mac was right, about the fun thing. He’d had a really good time with her, easily as good as he had with Logan, and way better than with Madison, despite the fact Mac was neither his best friend nor his girlfriend, at least, not yet. Though it still didn’t really fit in his head to consider her as next in line after Madison, they could certainly be good friends. Such a thing had to be possible since Dick highly doubted that Veronica was getting some with her basketball playing little buddy. Guys and girls could just be amigos, hang out, eat pizza, play video games...

“Friends.” He thought it over and liked the sound of it, not even realising the word had slipped out of his mouth, until Mac reacted to it.

“What?” she asked glancing back at him from the doorway.

“Uh, us,” said Dick awkwardly, getting to his feet and following her through the house. “We’re friends now, right?” he checked, looking strangely vulnerable and oddly cute to Mac.

It wasn’t as if it would be a lie if she said yes, after all she’d been there for him today in his hour of need. Plus they talked about a lot of stuff they had in common, they laughed and joked, and they’d had a great time playing video games and just hanging out tonight. Friends was the only word that fit properly so it would have to be what they were - nothing more, nothing less.

“Sure, yeah.” She nodded. “Friends is good,” she agreed as they head for the front door, Mac forever mindful of the time and what her parents would say if she was too late home.

“I never really had a girl bud before,” said Dick thoughtfully as he opened the front door for her to leave and Mac steeped out onto the porch.

“Well, I have a lot of guy friends so...” she began, immediately regretting it when she saw a strange look pass over Dick’s face.

If she didn’t know any better she’d say it hurt him to think she had other friends that she spent time with in much the same way as she’d just spent time with him. Why it should matter she couldn’t think, until her mind flashed back to the start of the evening. How lonely Dick looked, the way he’d got drunk and no-one was around to care. It occurred to her that perhaps he just wanted to feel special to someone, maybe her if she’d have him. Mac wasn’t so sure she wanted that responsibility right now and so quickly looked away and changed the subject fast.

“So anyway, I should go. Did you want to reschedule for math study or...?” she started to ask, until he interrupted her.

“I dunno, I’ll maybe call you or whatever.” Dick shrugged non-commitally.

“Okay.” Mac nodded once, turning to leave before changing her mind and facing him again. “I really had fun tonight, Dick.” She smiled. “Thank you for that,” she said before finally leaving, knowing she was turning red after her mini-confession.

It was the truth, fun was definitely had at Casa de Casablancas, and Mac had to admit, even if it was only to herself, that it had actually been worth not getting paid tonight just to spend the evening hanging out with Dick. Here they weren’t an 09er and a geek, they were just buds, like he’d quite rightfully said.

“Hey!” he called after her, and she turned as she reached her car. “We should totally have another tournament sometime,” he told her with a grin that she found infectious.

“We should,” Mac called back, “but y’know studying is important too,” she reminded him, trying to look stern about it but failing quite badly despite the effort made.

“Sure thing, teach.” He mock-saluted her from the porch. “You’re the boss.”

That made Mac giggle a little as she finally got into her car and drove away, waving over her shoulder as she pulled off the drive.

Dick waved back, as he watched her go, the oddest feeling pulling at his insides even now. He and Mac were friends now, she’d agreed with that, and it had to be a good thing. Still, there was this weirdness going on, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, that told him it wasn’t going to be that simple with her. Cindy Mackenzie was getting under his skin, and he didn’t know how to stop it.

* * *

“Am I right?” Mac asked with a hint of a smirk as she met Veronica in the hallway of Neptune High next morning.

“That depends what you’re thinking,” the blonde said with a look of confusion, her brain still kind of on the odd moment she’d just shared with Logan - it was weird how easily they’d rekindled their friendship as she tried to help him track down his Mom.

“Well, wasn’t Logan Echolls just asking you to the 80s dance?” Mac asked with a giggle, since she knew the idea of her friend going to such an event, especially with an 09er who had been bullying her for a year, was highly unlikely.

“No, unfortunately that special boy hasn’t asked yet.” She sighed over-dramatically with a hand over her heart. “but what about you, fair Miss Mac?” she asked as they headed down the hall way together. “Still waiting for some Prince Charming to ride in off the horizon and sweep you off your feet?”

“Yeah, because that’s going to happen.” Mac rolled her eyes as she tucked her blue-streaked hair behind her ear. “Exactly where does one find a prince these days?” she was asking, looking at Veronica and not where she was walking as she turned the corner.

It would seem the person travelling in the opposite direction was similarly distracted, and so a collision was imminent. Mac crashed into the solid chest of the last young man she’d expected, if she had in fact expected anyone at all.

“Oh, hi, Dick,” she said awkwardly as she looked up at him, his hands on her arms steadying her from falling the moment he realised who he’d run into.

Veronica watched an odd look pass between the pair before her. Mac seemed startled, maybe a little uncomfortable, but Dick, well, if Veronica didn’t know any better she’d almost think he was nervous around Mac, as if he liked her or something. To be sure, she stayed silent, watching the odd couple intently as they talked.

“Hey, Mac,” he said, letting go of her as he painted on a smile. “I was thinking, tonight, you and me, math study date?” he rattled off, his hands making a weird weighing up gesture as he waited for her response to his idea.

“Yeah, sure.” She nodded, smiling a little more genuinely than she had managed at first, Veronica noted. “But no distractions this time,” she warned him, pretending to be stern as she pointed a finger at him.

“Scouts honour,” he said, with a definite smirk and the appropriate salute as he continue walking, between Veronica and Mac, and out of sight.

“Okay,” the blonde said, shooting a look at her friends. “One, I do not believe Dick Casablancas was ever a boy scout,” she said definitely, making Mac laugh lightly, “and two, there were distractions at your last study date, Miss Mackenzie?” she said, trying not to smile too much. “Please, do elaborate,” she prompted, bumping elbows with her friend as they continued walking now.

“Not those kinds of distractions,” said Mac with a definite shake of her head. “For the thousandth time, its not like that with me and Dick,” she repeated, and whilst Veronica might have believed that Mac meant what she said, she wasn’t so sure that Dick wasn’t feeling something very different.

For now she kept her silence about that, for fear of making Mac so nervous and weird she couldn’t even attend the study sessions she and Dick shared. The money was useful, and Veronica knew how that went. Besides, it was unfair to tease her friend too much on a topic that clearly made her uncomfortable. However, there was one thing that had to be said, not for Veronica’s amusement or whatever, but because Mac deserved to be at least a little aware that Dick might be planning to make some kind of move.

“You know the rumour mill is going crazy over the Dick and Madison break up,” she said, glancing sideways at Mac who looked surprised.

“They broke up?” she checked, wondering why she didn’t know that, when a thought suddenly hit her.

Whilst Veronica said ‘see you later’ and went off to her class, Mac barely heard the bell ring over her head. Maybe that was why Dick had been drunk last night, because he’d broken up with his girlfriend. Mac didn’t consider for a moment that it had anything to do with her, that would be ridiculous, much like she kept telling Veronica. Still, she liked it better that she knew what was bothering Dick. She wasn’t sure she wanted to say anything to him about it but knowledge was power, at least she could if she wanted or needed to. Of course, these were all things to be considered later, Mac thought, as she realised the bell had sounded and she ought to be in class.


	9. Chapter 9

There was apprehension in the way Mac knocked on the door to the Casablancas house this evening. She’d just got some confidence in coming here, felt she had a purpose and a reason that gave her the right to hold her head up when she greeted whichever staff member opened the door and looked at her with barely hidden disdain.

“Hey, Mr Phillips.” She smiled at the severe man who answered her knock today, the usual butler-type guy. “Yes, it’s that time again,” she told him as he let her inside with a sigh.

He didn’t appreciate her attempts at small talk and Mac knew it, but she tried anyway. It seemed wrong not to say a word, just because he now knew who she was and why she was here. They had to speak to each other or it would just be rude! Ushered through to the usual room, the smile on Mac’s face faltered a little when she saw Dick. At least he was sober today, but that didn’t mean she really wanted to face him.

Things were simple in the beginning, mostly anyway. She was here to teach, Dick was here to learn, and they were both holding up their own end of the bargain. Now things were getting all serious and complicated. Mac had started seeing different sides to the blond surfer dude who she’d always considered to be simple, shallow, and little else. She wondered if he hurt inside, because his parents didn’t seem to care, because his latest romantic relationship was over, because nobody actually cared what he had to say. It made Mac quite sad to think of it, and quite uncomfortable if truth be told, not least because Veronica had put another idea firmly in her head that poor Mac would sooner not have. All that teasing about Dick liking her, it left a mark in the little brunette’s brain that simply would not fade. It seemed impossible, if not a little flattering should it be true. Unfortunately, Mac was altogether inexperienced in such situations and felt all that could come of any of this was she was going to make a f  
ool of herself, if Dick didn’t beat her to the punch.

“You okay, Macster?” the very man himself asked as she realised she’d been standing there by the table staring at him without a word this whole time.

“Er, yeah.” She shook her head, bringing herself out of a mini-daze as she moved around the table and sat down beside him. “Brain overload maybe? I don’t know.” She forced a smile as she opened her bag up on her lap and pulled out the books and papers she needed.

“Hey, that’s not supposed to happen until after we study,” Dick told her definitely as he picked up his pencil and readied himself to learn whatever Mac would teach him.

She didn’t reply, just got on with the latest lesson. Whilst they were talking about math, Mac knew all the answers and had complete confidence in what she was saying. If she had to have any kind of real conversation here today, she feared how she would handle it, what twists and turns might be taken. Dick’s life was none of her business and yet keeping her nose out of it and her opinions to herself might prove difficult if he decided she was the one he wanted to talk to. It was unlikely to happen, she told herself, but then who else did Dick really have to turn to? If it was a choice between her and a bottle, Mac would prefer to be nominated than allow her friend to become the newest member of Neptune’s AA group.

“Hey!” Dick called, waving a hand in front of her face and making Mac physically jump. “You did it again.” He smiled slightly at the weirdness of her zoning out on him a second time. “You sure you’re okay?” he checked.

“I am.” Mac nodded once. “I just... I was thinking... Are you okay?” she asked then, closing her eyes and wincing a little when she replied, the words she’d tried to keep back had just escaped her lips.

“Me?” Dick smiled in spite of the fact he didn’t exactly feel like the expression belonged on his face. “I’m... kinda wishing I had a beer right now,” he said as he got up from the table and moved quickly out of the room.

Mac couldn’t hear but he was cursing himself as he headed through the house, towards the refrigerator where he would find the beverage he craved. It was not at all what he meant to say when she asked if he was okay, but he was Dick Casablancas, he wasn’t supposed to talk about deep and serious stuff, hell, he didn’t usually think about it much until recently.

Dick was shallow, and he liked to be that way. Most of the time he was totally happy for the world at large to think of him as just a rich good-looking guy looking for a good time, because to all intents and purposes that’s what he was. Of course, he was also human, and he did feel. He did hate that neither of his parents had little or any time for him, and that his brother was half way around the world without him. It bothered him that Logan was spending so much time with Veronica Mars, and he didn’t like that when he actually tried to achieve something in school he was accused of cheating. There were a lot of things that bothered Dick that he only ever shared with a bottle of something stronger than that which currently sat in his hand. Still, the beer would do for now, and Mac’s company ought to help, though he was fighting the urge to let her be one more complication in his life.

Dumping Madison was the easy part for Dick; she was being an absentee bitch lately anyway, so he barely noticed a difference now they were done. The problem was, moving on to just any babe that happened along didn’t seem like it was going to work this time. Hot girls were aplenty in Neptune, and Dick knew with a little effort he could get laid every night of the week, but that wasn’t what he really wanted anymore. Spending time with Mac seemed like it was changing him, not just making him a better student, but a better person. She was all full of opinions which she’d started to share lately, and Dick liked to hear them, liked to talk to her about them. They could hang out together and play video games, she wasn’t too freaked out by his drinking yesterday, and she was without doubt the smartest chick he knew. Mac just handled everything so well, and it was amazing to Dick. Even he, dumb as he was prone to be, knew he was at risk of falling into that deep dark pit called love, even though the very idea seemed entirely insane.

Dick finished off his beer and reached for another from the refrigerator. Drunkenness was not going to help but it numbed his brain enough he wouldn’t have to think about the complications for a while. Mac wouldn’t be pleased when he couldn't even handle 2+2 never mind anything else Math related but...

“Hey.” Her voice behind him made Dick physically flinch as he turned to look and saw her standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame. “Look, Dick, this is dumb.” She sighed. “We both know what’s going on here-”

“We do?” he asked sharply - he knew she was smart but could she really read him so easily after such a short time of getting to know each other over Math text books and English essays?

“Yes,” she said with a single nod of her head. “You broke up with Madison and you feel bad about it so you’re drinking and not in a studying kind of a mood,” she told him what she thought to be true, looking a little awkward about it in spite of making every attempt not to.

Dick didn’t know how to respond to that. She was right, in a way. His break up with Madison was connected to all of this, but it wasn’t what had him wanting to hide somewhere with a bottle till the world went away.

“I guess it’s not easy,” she continued, even as he turned his back on her. “Especially when everybody is talking about you, not that everybody is,” she quickly amended. “I mean, I heard from Veronica and I think maybe Logan told her but... Yeah, stop rambling, Mac.” She smiled nervously, rolling her eyes at her own silly behaviour as Dick took a slug from his beer bottle then turned to face her again.

“It’s cool,” he told her with a shrug and a somewhat forced smile. “I dumped her, so it’s like... whatever, dude," he told Mac, who didn’t look entirely convinced, “and I so don’t care if bitches are talking... not you!” he added fast when he realised what he’d said. “Obviously, I didn’t mean-”

“I know,” she assured him with a small smile that he returned.

The pair started to feel awkward again then. They really weren’t the sharing kind with their own friends, so this type of conversation with each other was just entirely weird, not least because they hadn’t been talking buddies that long. He was a dumb 09er, she was practically a straight-A student and from the poorer side of town. They were as opposite as north and south and yet they got along so well, it was bizarre. At least, Mac thought, she was sure now that Veronica’s theories of any romantic feelings on Dick’s side of this relationship were unfounded. If he’d broken up with Madison, gotten drunk, and still hadn’t made any real move on her, Mac felt safe enough that he wasn’t going to. They could just be friends, like she was with so many other guys she knew. The slight disappointment somewhere deep inside would fade to nothing in time, she was sure.

“You think we could maybe blow off the Math tonight?” Dick asked her then, feeling like doing anything but that right now. “I’m thinking X-box tournament rematch?” he suggested, complete with over-dramatic arm-waving type gestures that almost resulted in beer spillage.

“How about a compromise?” Mac offered, folding her arms as she stood straight in the doorway. “We finish the page of problems we were working on, and you get at least most of them right, then we hit the consoles,” she said, stern enough that he knew he ought to agree with her, but with enough of a smile that he knew she didn’t want to seem mean.

“You got it, teach,” Dick mock-saluted as he took a step towards the door.

“And I’ll have a soda,” she told him, pointing to the fridge as she walked away and Dick dutifully took two steps back to get her the drink she asked for.

The smile on his face was genuine by now, another ability Mac seemed to have lately. With so many positive points in all areas, Dick knew he was being some kind of fool keeping her at arms length when there was a chance he might get somewhere, but it was actually kinda cool just being friends right now, he considered, as he got back to the table and joined her, passing her a coke, and clinking his bottle against hers as she thanked him.

Being buds with a chick was the weirdest thing to Dick, but he could deal. In a lot of ways, life was looking up since he let Mac into his house, his life, and his head. Sure it was confusing as hell considering how this relationship of sorts would end up, but right then Dick decided categorically he wasn’t going to think on it too much anymore. The Math gave him a big enough headache, the last thing he needed was to increase the pain by trying to figure out if and how he could date Mac. Right now she was being a great tutor and a friend, and he liked that. For now, he intended to let the matter lie, and concentrate on passing his classes when he needed to, and kicking girl butt on his X-Box when Mac allowed him the chance. Yeah, in a lot of ways, life was good for Dick Casablancas.

* * *

Even after hours in her company, Dick didn’t want Mac to leave. They studied then hung out, playing computer games and eating take-out, til his tutor and newest friend told him she really did have to go home. If for no other reason, she said, it was a school night.

“We should totally do this some night when you don’t have to leave so early,” he told her as she stepped out of the front door, and turned to face him on the porch. “Like a Friday or whatever, ‘cause you could totally stay over, we have like a gazillion rooms,” he said, hands making an explosive-type gesture to show just how much space there really was in his house - as if she hadn’t noticed.

“Uh, yeah, maybe,” said Mac, feeling a little awkward, after all, her Mom and Dad were hardly likely to react well to her telling them she’d like to stay over at a boy’s house, especially not a boy like Dick Casablancas who had somewhat of a reputation. “Not this Friday, obviously,” she said, wondering why he looked blank at her. “I mean, aren’t you going to the 80s dance at school?” she checked.

“Dude, that dance is gonna suck!” Dick exclaimed with disgust. “Only ‘tards are going to that... well, and couples who want to make out in a different decade or whatever,” he told Mac who nodded slowly.

“Oh, right,” she agreed. “Well, I’m not going either. Even if I wanted to I couldn’t,” she explained, though she wasn’t sure why. “It’s my parents anniversary so there’s a 80% chance I’m going to have to baby-sit my little brother.” She rolled her eyes at the thought.

Dick looked oddly at her for a moment before replying;

“That’s a probability of four in five,” he told her, like a proud first grader who just learnt to tie his shoe or something.

It was kind of adorable actually, Mac realised, if not a little odd and she smiled as she nodded he was correct.

“Right,” she said. “Um, well, I should be going so, I guess I’ll see you,” she added with a half-hearted wave before she finally made it out the door.

Dick leaned in the doorway, watching the brunette as she got into her car and drove off out of the main gates. Friends was cool, he liked that he had someone like her in his life. She was the best tutor, she talked a lot of sense for a chick, and she had mad skills in computer games that he never thought a girl could have. Yeah, he liked her a lot, and the fact she was hottest geek he ever met didn’t hurt either.


	10. Chapter 10

A lot of teenage girls would’ve been desolate to be stuck at home on the night of the big dance, but not Mac. The ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ event held little fascination for her, though perhaps, she considered, it might have if she had someone to go with. Mac didn’t seem like the princess type, though she ought to have been. If her rightful parents, the Sinclairs, had taken her home, who knows what she would have turned out like as an 09er. As it was, Mac was a lot more down to earth, and found there were so many more important things in the world to worry about than dresses that didn’t suit her and dates that she was sure would bore her. That didn’t mean a tiny part of her, buried deep inside, didn’t kind of wish some guy would sweep her off her feet one day.

Rolling her eyes at her own odd thoughts, Mac went back to her book. Sat lotus style on her bed, dressed in sweats with her hair pulled up in a half-hearted side ponytail, she was hardly what one would call presentable right now, hence the hesitation she felt when suddenly there was a knock at the front door.

With only herself and her little brother in the house, it meant Mac had to get up from her comfortable position, once again abandon her reading, and face whomever was calling looking like she’d just fallen out of the laundry basket after sleeping there or something. Not that she expected anyone important to be knocking at her door at this time on a Friday evening. Imagine the stunned look she wore then, when she opened the door and came face to face with perhaps the last person she ever expected to see.

“Dick?” poor Mac gasped, hardly able to believe he was really here, on her doorstep, and only really taking it in when he turned around to face her.

“Hey, I got the right house!” He grinned, before squeezing past Mac and heading inside.

Surprise stopped her from protesting about his barging in, as her mind raced a mile a minute. What was he doing here? How did he find out where she lived? What the hell must he think of how she was dressed? Thank God the parents aren’t home!

“Um, Dick?” she said as she hurried after him into the living room. “What are you doing here?” she asked, pushing stray hair out of her face and pushing up one sleeve that had fallen down from her elbow.

“I figured you were home alone, and I was home alone,” he said absently as he walked around the room, checking out the ornaments, framed photos and such that lined the walls and mantle shelf. “Thought we could, I dunno, hang out and stuff?” He shrugged, still not looking at her.

If Mac were bemused by his behaviour then Dick was doubly so. He honestly didn’t know why he was here anymore than she did. He had hoped to call up Logan and spend the evening getting wasted and/or chasing chicks with him, but ever since his Mom’s supposed death, poor Logan seemed to be on a downward spiral. Dick tried to be there for his buddy, but the guy just seemed to wanna be alone or with Ronnie most of the time. There was only so much effort Dick wanted to put in here, otherwise he was going to start looking desperate for friends!

With Logan apparently AWOL, and many of his other friends off to the 80s dance with girlfriends all in tow, that left Dick sitting at home by himself. Alone time meant his mind wandered, and when that happened the problems began. For some reason, Dick had issues with emptying his head of thoughts lately. It used to be pretty easy, but now when nothing else was occupying him, his mind almost always drifted to her, to Mac, the girl hovering somewhere behind him right now looking crazy-cute in that rumpled kind of a way that made him just want to kiss her already.

Dick had spent large amounts of time telling himself he didn’t like Mac, coming up with reasons why they couldn’t and shouldn’t be together, reminding himself that she was a brain and therefore too smart to even want to date a guy like him. Unfortunately, no amount of rational or irrational thought stopped the feelings he was getting. Dick was used to wanting girls, wanting to touch and taste and have. What came as a surprise with Mac was that he just wanted to be with her, spend time, hang out, get close in a different way to usual. Of course, telling her that would make him look like some kind of idiot, and Dick did enough of that already without making it worse.

Coming over here was probably the worst idea ever and yet, he’d been so excited at the thought of seeing her, practically bouncing like a kid in a candy store from the moment he’d had the idea. Glancing back at Mac he was starting to wonder if he’d made a big mistake, because she wasn’t looking quite so thrilled.

What Dick didn’t realise was that Mac’s awkwardness was only borne out of embarrassment. Whilst she was fine with looking the way she did and living the way she did, it was kind of off-putting to suddenly have this 09er guy standing in her house, which was a fraction of the size of his own home, whilst she stood here wearing her least attractive clothes and sported unkempt hair and nails.

“Yeah, I kinda crashed, didn’t I?” Dick said as he took in the obvious discomfort on her face. “I’ll just go,” he said, making to leave.

Mac’s hand on his chest surprised him and shocked the girl herself who was hardly aware she was moving til she’d done it.

“Um, no,” she said, dropping her hand away the instant they both looked at the contact that had been made. “I mean, you can stay, we can hang out,” she said, with a genuine smile. “I just, I wasn’t expecting company,” she said, glancing down at her outfit.

“Don’t sweat it, babe,” he told her with a grin, feeling good about the fact she wanted him to stay and getting back a little of his usual confidence as he threw himself past her and into the couch. “Y’know you kinda look like that chick from that movie with your hair all sideways,” he said as he stared over at her, trying to remember what he was even talking about. “Whatever,” he waved away his own idea with his hand when he realised he couldn’t recall the name of either the movie or the character he meant. “Hey, someone was a cutie!” he declared then, as he dove back up and grabbed a framed picture from the mantle shelf, clearly one he had missed on his first go around.

Mac couldn’t help but blush at the comment as Dick waved around the photo of herself at age five. There wasn’t a girl on the planet, she was sure, that wouldn’t be a little pleased, if not entirely embarrassed, to be told they were cute, in the past or present tense.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, taking the picture from his hand and replacing it on the shelf. “Um, if you want to get a drink, the kitchen is that way,” she said, gesturing through a door. “I don’t have an X-box and stuff, but I can set up a game on my computer if you want,” she said, wondering what Dick Casablancas would think when he saw her bedroom.

“Sure, that’s cool.” He nodded, as he followed her pointing gesture through to the kitchen and straight into the fridge.

When he was gone, Mac headed for her room to set up the game like she’d said. It was only then, as she replayed her previous thought in her head, that she realised what was happening here. She was about to have a boy in her bedroom, a boy from the 090909 zipcode, a boy called Dick Casablancas who, up to a few days ago, was dating the girl who belonged in this very bedroom instead of her. That only served to remind Mac that had things been as they should be, Dick would’ve been in her real room so many times, and in her bed probably. The idea sent a shiver down her spine, and not in an unpleasant way, as she stared at her computer screen and wondered what the hell was going on here tonight.

* * *

“Oh, no you don’t!” Mac exclaimed, as she upped her game in the battle being played via the characters on the screen.

“Oh, yes I do, babe.” Dick grinned as he continued to kick her butt.

Things had settled down into a comfortable place for the pair, though it had taken a little while. With no big games station and wide screen TV like at the Casablancas house, the pair were forced to sit up close in front of the regular computer monitor, causing discomfort on either side.

Mac just couldn’t get the thought out of her head that if she and Madison had been traded back at the age of four, or never mixed up in the first place, she and Dick wouldn’t be playing computer games in her room, oh no, they’d be doing something far more intimate by now in the Sinclairs house on the other side of town. The dirty thoughts threw her off her game, and made sitting this close to Dick entirely awkward, though she made no fuss about it.

Dick himself had drowned out all possible thoughts about getting close to Mac by focusing his eyes and brain entirely on the task at hand. Computer games were so simple, all he had to do was make the figure on the screen do as it was told. Each command delivered via the controller in his hand was obeyed immediately. If only it was so easy for him to control how he felt, he’d be fine by now, but apparently it didn’t work that way.

“Come on,” he said to himself and the character on the screen, clicking buttons like crazy until finally the words on the screen declared him the winner. “Bam! Victory!” he yelled, punching the air with great delight.

Mac looked appropriately peeved at losing... for the third time in a row. She was usually pretty good at all kinds of computer games, after all they were mostly logic and thumb agility, both of which she had oodles of. Unfortunately, Dick had as few hobbies as she did and was as good if not better than her when it came to ass-whooping via any kind of computer console.

Dick’s sitting-backwards-on-a-desk-chair version of a victory dance was equal parts stupid and cute as Mac glanced over at him, wanting to be mad still but finding it difficult as amusement crossed her face. Without thinking, she grabbed a pillow from where she’d been previously sat on the bed, thwacking Dick in the face with it. The semi-forceful blow only had so much affect because it had been so unexpected and Mac went into a fit of uncharacteristically girly giggles at the the look on his face.

“Oh, you are so gonna pay,” he told her with a devilish look in his eyes when he looked her way then.

Mac was just a little apprehensive as she wondered what he might do next. She wasn’t so dumb she thought he’d actually hurt her, but as he leaned closer, she knew at the very least she should expect contact between them. As crazy as the thought was in her own head, there was an odd moment where Mac actually thought Dick was going to kiss her, and was uncertain whether she was relieved or disappointed when it didn’t happen.

Fingers at her ribs made her gasp with surprise at first then giggle like a kid when she realised what he was doing. Attempting to slap his hands away did little good, and Mac couldn’t be mad at him or yell for him to stop tickling her right now, as laughter overtook her and removed all the breath from her body. She slid off the chair without meaning too and Dick moved to reach her still, the pair of them tumbling to the ground in a pile of limbs. It was only his quick reactions that stopped him landing completely on top of her and crushing her into the carpet. As it was, she lay mostly beneath him now, breathing heavily as her giggles subsided. Dick looked down on her with such a serious expression, Mac wanted to break the moment but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Surely this wasn’t real, he wasn’t really going to make a move or anything, she thought, but as his fingers reached out and brushed against her cheek and he leaned in closer, it seemed entirely possible...

BANG!

The sound echoed from beyond the wall, followed by a childish yelp and scream.

“Ryan,” Mac reacted immediately to her little brother’s distress, sliding out from underneath Dick and clambering over her bed to more quickly reach the door.

The blond picked himself up off the carpet then, running a hand back through his hair as he looked around the room and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened here. Catching himself in the small mirror in the corner he frowned.

“Dude, what the hell were you doin’?” he asked himself quietly, shaking his head as he realised he knew just exactly what the answer to that question was.

By the time Mac returned to her room, having settled her little brother down from his nightmare and the falling out of bed that followed, Dick would be gone, with no explanation or even a goodbye.


	11. Chapter 11

“Hey, Veronica!” Mac called to her friend as they passed each other in the hall. “Are you...?” she began, only to be interrupted by the blonde who carried on walking when she did not.

“Sorry, Mac, can’t stop right now,” Veronica apologised as she continued on. “Life of a parrot depends on me,” she said, before she was gone from sight, leaving Mac to wonder what on Earth she’d meant by that.

“Parrot?” she echoed with a frown as she turned back around to see where she was going.

The computer lab seemed like a good place to sit and think, though Mac had done enough of that this past weekend, she wasn’t sure how many more ways she could go over it all in her head. The ‘all’ on her mind was of course Dick Casablancas and the weird evening he and Mac had spent together on Friday. Whilst the buzz at Neptune High mostly revolved around the 80s dance, the only thing on Mac’s mind was a night in with the most unlikely guy, who had run out on her after what could only be described as an almost-kiss.

There in lie the real weirdness, Mac observed, as she walked into the empty computer room and sat herself down at a station. She hadn’t really thought about Dick in that way, not seriously. She knew he was considered popular in school, he was an 09er after all, rich and good-looking enough to get any girl he wanted, she suspected. Of course, she knew he’d had trouble keeping hold of Madison Sinclair, but hey, who the hell would want to keep her anyway?

Whether or not Dick wanted to get a hold of Mac in any way at all, she couldn’t be sure, but it hardly added up if he did. They’d come close to being close and the next thing she knew he was gone without a word. All weekend she’d waited for a call or something, a message telling her what had happened and an apology for bolting the way he had - none had come. What bugged Mac most, she suspected, was that she’d actually thought she and Dick were friends now, as much as an 09er and a geek ever could be anyway. They talked, they hung out, he made her laugh, she helped him with his math, it was a nice little arrangement and she’d been enjoying his company. Mac wouldn’t say she was entirely comfortable in the company of Dick Casablancas, but she wasn’t exactly uncomfortable either. In fact, she’d almost forgotten how odd their situation was, until they’d landed on her bedroom carpet in a pile of limbs, his body hovering right above her own, his breath in her face, the anticipation of a perfect moment making her shiver deep inside.

“I didn’t want him to kiss me,” she muttered to herself for perhaps the hundredth time as she went over it in her head once again, logging into the computer at the same time.

Immediately she was forced to mentally slap herself for the lie. A part of her had wanted the kiss she was expecting, though even Mac wasn’t sure why. She honestly hadn’t thought about it til then, hadn’t really considered Dick wanting to date her or anything. They were tutor/tutee, maybe friends behind closed doors only, definitely not a potential couple, that was insane!

“Is it insane?” she asked the computer screen, but the only response was the cursor flashing at the top of a blank page that ought to contain an essay, or at the very least the start of one!

It was some kind of weird irony, Mac was sure of it, that she was being employed to tutor Dick in English, Math, and all, and yet her own work was now suffering from the lack of concentration brought on by spending time with the 09er dude! A part of Mac wished she’d never offered to tutor him in the first place, and certainly thought it would have been sensible to keep Dick at arms length at the very least. Still, it was too late for that now, too late for wishing things were not the way they were, and even if she could go back and change the situation, Mac wasn’t entirely sure she would. It was nice having a friend like Dick, it was different and fun hanging out and playing computer games, talking about random stuff with the last guy she would ever expect to have things in common with. Veronica saw a spark between them, well, she seemed to think that anyway. It might just be a friendly joke but the more Mac thought on it, the more it freaked her out. Dick couldn’t find her attractive, that would be insanity in the highest degree. He hung around with 09ers, dated people like Madison Sinclair and other blonde bimbo types that were loved for their money and what they kept in their sweater! Mac was appreciated by friends and acquaintances for her computer skills and being a good friend, at least she liked to think so.

“Concentrate,” the brunette told herself sternly then, as she placed her hands on the computer keyboard and started her essay.

In between paragraphs she managed to convince herself that all this stupid thinking about Dick and trying to define their relationship was just beyond insane. It wasn’t doing her any good, and at the end of the day he probably felt as awkward about Friday night as she did. It was best if they just forgot about it, and Mac made that decision for the both of them as she hammered away on the computer keyboard until the period was almost over, quite proud of herself to have almost completed her assignment when the bell was due to ring.

With a smile, she saved the document and logged out of the computer, moving to gather up her things just as her cell buzzed in her pocket. Reaching for her phone, Mac tried to push away the mixture of excitement and worry that arose the moment she saw Dick’s name on the display. Taking a deep breath, Mac opened up the text message, unable to resist a smile at his turn of phrase and over-use of texting abbreviations. The gist of the message was that he needed study help tonight, which ought to be easy to answer, but Mac’s thumb hovered over the keypad for a long moment as she thought about it.

Being Dick’s tutor still made sense, from a cash point of view as well as from the angle of them being friends these days. It would be wrong to let him down now, just when they were doing so well, and clearly the oddness of Friday night hadn’t bothered Dick at all. Still, he was the one that ran out on her, and that bothered Mac. She did still want an explanation for his rude behaviour, though a part of her dreaded what his reasons might be. It couldn’t be anything too awful, or surely he wouldn’t be asking her to continue on as his tutor? There were plenty of other people in school he could employ instead...

Pulling herself together and shaking her head at her own silly behaviour, Mac’s thumb criss-crossed the keypad of her cell, quickly telling Dick she would see him tonight, same time, same place. Within moments another reply came, just a ‘cool’ with a smiley face beside it. That made Mac grin in spite of herself. Dick was such an idiot, but for the most part a decent and nice idiot who had been totally sweet to her lately. At least if she went over to his house tonight she would have the chance to ask him where he ran off to Friday night... if she could get up the nerve to actually ask him!

* * *

Dick may have seemed normal to Mac when she arrived at Chez Casablancas and sat down to begin teaching him the next chapter in his Math textbook. To her, he would seem his usual chirpy, silly, charming self, Dick had no doubt, but he didn’t feel that way at all. Friday night had been such a screw up, from all angles, leading him to getting a little wasted when he arrived home, and spending much of the weekend either drunk or suffering the effects of it.

Women were built to make men crazy, that’s what Dick had always believed, and that had been confirmed by his father, his friends, and pretty much any other guy he talked to about the subject ever. He’d figured Mac was different to all other women, which she was in many ways, but she still had that same ability as all the rest, to make him feel totally stupid and out of his depth with every smile.

Friday night was not his finest hour, Dick knew that. At the very least he ought to have made up some excuse for leaving and not just bolted whilst Mac was in her brother’s room. Unfortunately, confrontation wasn’t really Dick’s thing. He was a laid back kind of a guy, he didn’t want to get into complicated feelings and all that crap, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

Lately it was like his whole world was changing, and it had all started the day he asked Mac to be his tutor. She was just different to any girl he’d ever met, as cool to hang out with as any guy friend, and somehow as cute and sexy as any woman he’d craved to touch. A multitude of reasons stopped him actually making a move, the greatest of which were his friends and Mac herself.

The 09er guys would not get what he saw in a computer geek, and whilst Dick ought to be strong enough to stand up and say he could date whoever he wanted and didn’t care what they thought, he couldn’t. Peer pressure was a bitch, and so much of what Dick said and did was because others were doing it too. Trend-setting was not so much his thing, running with the pack was more his style. Psych 101 would say he was looking for acceptance because he found none at home, an absentee mother, workaholic father, and genius brother that he never got to see making for a sad and lonely Dick. His friends had no idea, and he never told them, just laughed and drank and surfed and acted like he cared about nothing but these activities, and of course nailing hot chicks. As it was, the guys had assumed his declaring to date Mac was a joke and/or part of a speech to knock Madison down a notch. They never considered for a moment that Dick had meant those words he said, and just because it was easier, he let them go on believing it was all a big joke.

The trouble was, for once in his life, Dick wasn’t joking, not about Mac, not about how he felt about her. It scared him half to death that he was losing control, proven by Friday night when he’d come so close to kissing her. She’d be horrified and he knew it, to think a guy like him would want her. She was a brain, way too smart to get mixed up with an 09er who had the reputation of the young Mr Casablancas. If she ever knew he liked her that way, he wouldn’t even have her as a tutor or a friend anymore, and that he could not bear.

“Earth to Dick!” Mac snapped her fingers in front of his face, making the blond realise that his thoughts had completely distracted him - he hadn’t heard a word she’d said for fully five minutes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head til his brain got back into gear.

“No problem,” came the immediate response from his tutor as she took a breath and began her explanation again. “So, what I was saying was-”

“No,” he interrupted her, making Mac jump just a little as she glanced up from the text book to his eyes that looked much more troubled than usual. “I don’t mean sorry for the zoning. I mean, sorry I ran out Friday without telling you why,” he explained, making something flip over inside Mac’s chest.

He looked like a little lost puppy, so afraid he’d done something to upset his master. It was beyond cute and yet Mac was as sure it was entirely genuine, something not normally associated with the 09er guys who played girls like fiddles to get what they wanted, or so Mac had heard.

“I was going to ask about that but...” she started to say, realising there was no way for her to finish that sentence without making a complete fool out of herself.

Dick did not need to hear the thoughts that had been rolling around in her head the past two days, it wouldn’t help matters, and they’d probably both end up looking and feeling equally a stupid as each other.

“Yeah, I, er, I got a call on my cell, I just... I had to go,” he explained cryptically. “So, sorry about that,” he said, as his eyes went from hers to the text book in a second and he cleared his throat, hoping the moment would pass without too much fuss being made.

“Okay.” Mac nodded once as she realised she hadn’t really got an explanation, but obviously there wasn’t going to be one without her pushing her nose into what must be his private business.

The whole almost-kiss thing was clearly to be swept under the carpet, something the pair were both grateful for in a lot of ways. Still, the uncomfortable silence that settled in proved it was on both their minds right now.

“So, we’re still friends, right?” Dick asked, though he never looked at Mac at all.

“Sure.” She nodded. “It’s no big.” She shrugged, concentrating as hard on the table as he was but not seeing any words written on the books and paper spread around.

Glancing her way, he allowed himself a smile, deciding if she felt as weird about all this as he did that was at least one good thing.

“Cool,” he said, as she glanced sideways at him and returned his smile. “’Cause y’know if we stopped being friends right now, that’d really suck,” he said definitely. “Just because, y’know its my birthday next week and I totally wouldn’t get a gift,” he teased her, earning himself a smack in the arm for his trouble, and an oddly girlish giggle that was music to his ears.

For now it seemed the Mac/Dick friendship had been salvaged, but beneath the smiles and friendly teasing something much deeper lurked in both of them. It was as if a time-bomb had begun ticking at some point Friday night in Mac’s bedroom, and they both knew an explosion was imminent. Whether it would lead to glory or destruction, neither was sure, but something was bound to happen before too long.


	12. Chapter 12

It was Dick’s birthday, and Mac shifted nervously outside the front door of the Casablancas house. He had invited her, and she had agreed, despite her reservations. After all, she had said, surely he would be having a big party with his friends for his seventeenth birthday, or maybe even spending a little time with his Dad. Dick had explained that Big Dick was due to be out of town all week, and that his friends were unlikely to recall his big day. Besides, he’d told her, he wanted to try something different this year, just hanging out with a couple of buds or whatever, namely Mac.

There were a few cars out front of the house that she didn’t recognise, which seemed odd, but not enough to signify anything strange was happening. There were a hundred reasons why there might be cars here, and whilst one of them was an impromptu party for Dick, that made Mac a lot less nervous than it might have a few short weeks ago.

Sure, if an 09er party was kicking off inside, Mac would feel somewhat out of place... okay, make that a lot out of place, but she had faith in Dick. He treated her decently, they were friends now, and she trusted that if he stood up for her, his friends would give her no trouble at all. At least any girls invited here shouldn’t include Madison Sinclair after the nasty break up between the two. That would be the mother of all awkwardness!

Taking a deep breath, Mac reached out and rang the doorbell as she had done so many times before, clutching her gift for Dick tight in her other hand. He was guaranteed to love the video game she had brought him, the as yet unreleased demo of the latest Halo game that she’d only managed to lay her hands on through some serious hacking, downloading, and dealing with fellow computer whizzes. I was worth it, to see Dick’s mega-watt smile when she handed it over.

With a smile already on her own face, Mac waited for someone to answer the door, and when no-one came, she rang the bell again. Her happy expression faltered some when she finally heard movement behind the door, female laughter and booming music amongst other sounds. Then the door finally swung open, and a bunch of drunk 09ers fell out onto the gravel of the driveway. Mac barely got out of their way before she was flattened, and winced as one of the guys at her feet threw up spectacularly within inches of her shoes.

Dodging around the nameless drunk, Mac hurried inside fast and looked around. She could hear noise coming from the back of the house where she knew the pool resided. Very few people it seemed were actually inside, and Mac could only presume that the staff were long gone for the night. This was definitely an unchaperoned, unwelcome surprise of a party to Cindy Mackenzie, and her first instinct was to run like hell.

“Hey, look who’s here!” a voice she wasn’t too sure of yelled somewhere to her left.

Mac didn’t even have time to turn and register who was there when an arm suddenly landed around her shoulders and she was pulled down onto the nearby couch by the dead-weight of yet another marinated 09er guy.

“Um, I was looking for Dick,” she said, shifting away from the nameless ‘dude’ who reeked of alcohol. “I didn’t know there was a party.”

“Oh, you wanted a little alone time with the birthday dude, huh?” The drunk guy leered. “Makes sense, I mean, even geek chicks need love, right?” he said, moving closer to her again.

Mac was on her feet in a second, ploughing straight into the chest of yet another male as she attempted a hasty exit.

“Did no girls come to this party?” she said indignantly, as she tried to go around the brick wall of male chest that had got in her way.

“Actually, not many,” she was told by a voice that was at least familiar. “Hey, Mac.”

“Duncan Kane.” She smiled up at him. “A familiar and less drunk face is helpful,” she commented, adjusting her bag on her shoulder and clutching onto Dick’s present in her hand still.

“Don’t mind Caz,” he gestured to the guy who was now half asleep on the empty couch cushions. “He’s mostly harmless, just gets a little handsy when he drinks.”

“Men are what they are.” Mac shrugged. “You know where I can find Dick?” she asked, hoping to just see the guy hand over the present and get out now, all other plans she may have had about hanging out, playing video games, or whatever now completely gone out of the window.

“Er, outside, around the pool, I guess,” said Duncan with a vague gesture of his hand toward the glass doors. “I honestly don’t know what happened, one minute there was like three of us saying, ‘Hey, let’s surprise Dick on his birthday’, and next minute, full-blown pool party.”

“Excellent.” The brunette before him nodded once, as she turned her head towards the doors and saw a couple of fully clothed people diving head first into the water. “Swimming drunk, that’s gonna hurt like hell in the morning.”

“Mm-hm.” Duncan nodded, before taking more notice of his beer than Mac, giving her a chance to wander away.

Mac had just made it to the French doors and was looking out at the scene that lay before her. A lot of guys, not so many girls, just like Duncan had said, around the pool. Perhaps Madison had some influence over whether or not the other 09er girls attended. As much of a bitch as she was, Mac understood she had quite an influence on her own crowd. Clearly the B in Queen Bee stood for bitch in that particular social circle.

“Macky!” 

The shout went up and Mac winced a little as she was pulled up into an almighty hug by the very guy she was looking for. Mac might have enjoyed the moment, were it not for the fact Dick was way past ten on the drunk-o-meter. So much for their nice quiet birthday celebrations of video games and sugar highs, this had become an 09er bash that Mac now felt she as invading, or would have done if not for Dick’s apparent enthusiasm about her presence here.

“Hey, Dick,” she said awkwardly as he finally released her. “I, er, I didn’t know there was a party,” she said with a vague gesture towards the many people around, some of which were watching the scene before them, intrigued by the display.

“Me either, dude!” he exclaimed, as he threw an arm around her shoulders, simultaneously continuing to get jiggy to the booming music that came from God only knew where, “but this is so cool, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Mac agreed half-heartedly. “Um, you maybe want to come inside a minute, I kinda bought you a gift,” she explained, mindful of the 09er crowd listening in and yet also that she would never be heard over the music if she didn’t raise her voice some.

“Hell, yeah!” the blond yelled happily. “Hey dudes, we’ll be back, but my girl Mac here totally has a gift for me inside,” he said, in full leering boy fashion that made his tutor-friend decidedly uncomfortable as they went inside, especially when the guys all cheered at Dick’s words.

Mac could use these people not thinking she was Dick’s sex toy or whatever, since she most certainly was not and would never allow herself to be. Sure, she’d vaguely considered the possibility of something occurring between them, but there was no way in hell she would be used in any way by any guy, not even her newest friend, Dick.

Sitting down on the couch in the nearest living room (Mac sat down at one end, Dick pretty much fell down at the other), the pair were as awkward as they ever were for a moment, before apparently realising they were alone, away from prying eyes and ears, and didn’t have to worry about what anyone else thought for a while.

“So, happy birthday.” Mac smiled, handing over the present she’d had a death-grip on this whole entire time. “It doesn’t look like much but it’s... well, it’s kind of a big deal, I guess.”

“Awesome, dude!” he enthused as he tore off the wrapping and saw what she had got for him

Even in his drunken state, Dick was all too aware of the effort that must have gone to in order to get this game for him. Nobody had this, none of his friends, despite all their money. You had to have the geek gene, know where to look and how to work it when you found it. Money was almost unimportant, though he figured it could easily have cost Mac a fair few dollars too.

“I thought you’d like it.” She smiled across at him, pleased at the smile on his face she knew she had put there with her gift.

Unfortunately, within a moment, Mac was reminded that this wasn’t the fun evening in with a friend she’d had planned when she came here. Dick was soon up and excited, wanting to go outside and show all his friends his great gift. That was cool, but Mac could use not being dragged into the middle of this party that was 80 percent guys who would judge her, and 20 percent girls who she had nothing common with.

“Really, Dick, you should enjoy your party, and I’ll see you tomorrow or whatever,” she told him, getting to her feet and turning away.

“No, don’t leave,” he urged her, making a grab at her arm to keep her from walking out on him.

The fact he was already unstable on his feet combined with her not at all expecting him to reach for her, meant the two ended up falling backwards together, landing in a pile of limbs on the couch. Dick apparently found it hilarious, and his infectious laughter soon got the better of Mac too. As they attempted to remove themselves from each other, Mac and Dick suddenly found themselves face to face and very close together. That night in her room flashed through both their minds, laying on the bedroom floor with an overwhelming urge that was almost impossible not to give into, so Dick just did it.

Mac was sure he moved first, and just at the moment when she was going to bolt for the door in fear of what came next. It wasn’t that Dick scared her, it was more the fact that he seemed to actually like her, and worse than that, she didn’t even mind. Surely she couldn’t really like him like that, she told herself, and yet when his lips landed on hers and he kissed her at last, she had no want or need to push him away. Inexperienced as she was with guys, Mac knew what a good kiss was like, and this was it, as she allowed herself to give in to the moment Dick had started.

“Hey, man, Dick’s bangin’ the geek chick!” a voice yelled from the door, shattering an otherwise perfect moment in seconds.

Dick was sitting upright in an instant, and by the time he’d registered quite what had happened, Mac had bolted from the room via the other door. He watched her retreating form until it was gone from sight then turned to glare a little at Luke. The other boy looked unashamed and even dared to look confused.

“What?” he asked innocently, as if he had no idea what he’d just done, but Dick knew, even in his drunken state, just exactly what he’d done.

Kissing Mac felt as good as he’d thought it would, maybe even better than he thought, though his senses weren’t exactly reacting at 100 percent right now, so it was hard to tell. Heaven only knew how far he would’ve got with her, had Luke not barged in, since she certainly seemed willing to kiss him back and maybe more. Now they’d never know, because she was gone, and Dick was unfortunately all too aware of the ribbing he would get from his friends if they all heard what Luke just said about him ‘banging the geek’.

“Dude!” he declared as he got up from the couch and moved out of the glass doors with his buddy. “I was totally just getting my birthday gift,” he told his friends, who laughed out loud at Dick’s attitude and behaviour. “She’s my tutor, man, and I deserve a birthday reward for all my hard work,” he joked, making light of a situation he knew would seem a whole lot more serious when he was sober, and even more so when he had to face Mac again.

Of course, that moment was to come a little sooner than he thought, this he realised as Duncan gestured wildly for Dick to shut his mouth and look behind him. Evidently, Mac had run out of embarrassment but had not bolted from the house. Now she was back, and she’d heard exactly what Dick had said. That moment they’d shared that she’d considered so special clearly meant nothing at all, and that hurt like hell.

“Mac,” he began, too quietly, but it was obvious before he said it that she wouldn’t want to hear, evidenced by the way she turned and ran, this time for real, right through the house and out to her car so she could get away from here, away from the guy that hurt her.

“Babes, who needs them!” Luke declared, handing Dick another beer, and though he took it with a smile, that expression was forced.

“So true, dude,” he agreed, albeit half-heartedly.

This was now officially the worst birthday ever.


	13. Chapter 13

Mac looked across at her cell phone where it rattled on the library table, receiving a text message, and she knew before she even picked it up who it would be from. This would be the third message from Dick since he stopped trying to call her, an activity he seemed to be taking quite seriously this morning. Mac refused to talk to him, though her reasons were probably much different to what he thought.

Initially, Cindy Mackenzie had gone through the usual emotions that any normal teenage girl might feel on being kissed and rejected, made a fool of in front of others. She was mad as hell at Dick for his behaviour, and the pain in her chest was unbearable as she’d bolted for her car with tears threatening to spill from her eyes at any moment. Yes, she’d cried, she’d yelled at nobody, and when she got home she’d gone straight to her room, glad not to run into her parents or her brother at all.

Now it was two days later, and with the weekend giving her time to reflect, Mac found she wasn’t so angry anymore. The overriding emotions she was feeling were disappointment and embarrassment, the first because she had hoped Dick was a better person than he now appeared, and the latter because she couldn’t quite believe how dumb she’d been.

Mac had believed Dick when he said they were friends, and was even stupid enough to think that they might like each other a little more than that. Now she was spending the day trying to be comfortable with the fact Dick saw her as a tutor and a friend only behind closed doors, whilst also convincing herself she never felt anything real for the blond either. All this was much easier to do when she didn’t have to talk to the guy, hence avoiding him at every cost, hiding in the library, and ignoring every effort to reach her via her cell. By tomorrow, she told herself she’d be brave enough to face him and arrange the next study date, telling him the events of his birthday were temporary insanity on both their parts, that they didn’t matter and were to be forever forgotten.

Checking her watch, Mac sighed and gathered up her books. She needed to visit the bathroom before her next class, and she intended to get to that as fast as possible, preferably before the bell rang and the halls filled with students that may or may not include Dick Casablancas. She’d be easy to spot in the lesser numbers of Neptune High alumni, the amount decreased by the so-called bomb scares. Mac didn’t really know what to think about the rumours, though Veronica seemed pretty certain something bad was going down.

Hurrying down the hall, Mac wondered how she could be so wrapped up in her situation with Dick when lives, including her own, might very well in danger. Perhaps this is what so-called ‘normal’ teenage girls felt like...

* * *

“Mr Casablancas!” his science teacher, Mr Woo, bellowed down the room. “If I see that cell phone one more time I’m confiscating it!” he warned the blond, who dutifully stuffed the phone into his pocket with a sigh.

“Dude, what is with you?” Logan asked his friend in a whisper as Woo looked away, and continued his lecturing.

“Mac still won’t talk to me,” he hissed back. “I think she’s pretty pissed at me after that fight thing we had.”

“Are you ever going to tell me exactly what happened?” his friend asked, with a shake of his head.

All Dick had said was they had a fight, and would explain no further. It struck Logan as odd that the tutor would be so mad at the tutee over an incorrect math problem or similar. Something serious had happened, and Logan was almost certain it had to do with the closeness between the pair that was becoming more and more apparent. He suspected Dick didn’t even realise how much time he spent talking about the pretty hot geek with blue streaks in her hair, but he did it a lot, and Logan for one had noticed.

Some of the guys who’s headed over to the Casablancas house for a party at the weekend mentioned Dick had got up close and personal with ‘that geek chick’ but Logan paid no mind to the 09ers who were mostly always drunk at such events and exaggerated stories afterwards - he should know, he had often been one of them! Still, something had occurred, of that he was certain.

Dick was quite happy keeping his mouth shut on the subject for now, at least until Mac decided to talk to him about what had happened. He was such an idiot. He’d wanted to kiss her so bad and it felt so good when it happened. She was totally kissing him back too, which was awesome, but when they got caught and his friends made comments about the clinch he and Mac had been seen in, fear had bubbled up inside him and made Dick feel nauseous.

It was natural to want to be liked, but Dick knew he’d gone too far, insulting Mac in every possible way by implying he was using her, and hurting her terribly by letting her think she was nothing to him but a potential chance at scoring. She was so much more than that, a special friend the like of which he’d never had before, perhaps even the girl he’d been waiting for all his life, without even knowing it. He wanted to tell her that but Sunday had brought a hangover he could barely think through and today, Mac was obviously avoiding him, both in person and on the phone.

As a bell rung out, loud and constant, Mr Woo looked out of the classroom door and then to his students.

“Okay, class,” he said quickly, trying to stay calm but finding it hard given the circumstances. “We all know what to do, single file, quickly and quietly outside,” he urged them, as a few panicked and bolted out the door, followed by those disbelievers of the bomb threats at a more sedate pace.

The whole class were soon assembled outside with all the others and Mr Clemmons tried to keep the students calm and quiet as he began a roll call. So many were checked off the list as present and accounted for, but by the time the alphabet got to M two names were left unmarked - Cindy Mackenzie was one, and Veronica Mars another.

A panic rose in Dick’s chest, the like of which he’d never really felt before. Things hurt him, though he rarely showed it, situations brought pain in his heart, like the day his Mom and brother left him, like the fact his father barely paid him any attention. Still, there had never been a feeling like this before, like his chest was so tight he couldn’t breath, like the world was spinning out of his control. Dick was afraid, petrified even that no-one seemed to know where to find Mac.

This wasn’t the first evacuation of the building, though before they’d all been considered to be bogus fire drills. Now the alumni of Neptune High knew the real reason for all this disruption, and the term ‘bomb scare’ was all too literal. Some were so afraid of the implications that they hadn’t even come into school, some from their choice and some from their parents. Dick wasn’t afraid of losing his life, he was too pretty to die, or so he told Logan this morning. They played macho man off each other because it was what was expected. Right now, Dick couldn’t think about how he should behave, or what he should be doing. All he could do was worry about Mac and why she wasn’t here, answering roll call.

A full minute passed, just sixty seconds, maybe even less but to Dick Casablancas it felt like a lifetime, and still Mac didn’t show. Teachers looked concerned, fellow students chattered nervously, but Dick, as always, was to be the man of action. Without a word he moved back towards the building, just as a familiar female form emerged.

“Ronnie!” he called to the blonde, Logan right behind him. “Where’s Mac?”

“She’s not out yet?” Veronica said worriedly, turning back to look behind her, feeling a little panicked, after all, there was nothing to say whether these bomb threats were real or not, and if Mac was inside...

“I’m gonna go find her,” he said definitely, despite a couple of teachers yelling for him to stop and come back.

Dick made it to the door just as Mac came out, looking a little pale and shaken after her ordeal that would be somewhat embarrassing to explain. Right now though she wasn’t asked to speak, and was far too stunned to do so as she stared up at Dick and realised what he’d been about to do. Grabbing her hand, he hurried her away from the building and joined the large group of students gathered across the quad.

“I was worried, when you didn’t come out,” Dick told her, apparently not noticing or not caring that a large number of his fellow students were now watching the scene in awe.

Mac was a little shocked that he cared that much, and completely forgot to be mad at him right now. What happened at his party, she didn’t think she knew how to forgive, but it was the last thing on her mind right now. All she could think was how scared she was, trapped in the school with the alarms sounding and panic ensuing beyond the door, that and the fact that the guy before her seemed to want to be her hero in all of this.

“I was... the lock on the stall got jammed, and I panicked...” she explained, blushing at both the explanation she had to give and the fact that so many people were apparently staring because Dick Casablancas had effectively been willing to risk his life for her, a poor computer geek.

“Babe, nobody was panicking like I was,” he admitted, feeling just a little weird about admitting such a thing, but honestly, he couldn’t help himself.

Dick wasn’t used to being afraid, especially for someone else and not his own skin. Fear of losing Mac made him realise just what she meant to him, and made him feel an even bigger tool about what happened on his birthday just a couple of days ago. Looking down at the innocent little brunette from whom he had learnt so much, not just about school work but about what it was to be a friend and all, Dick felt like he was losing his mind. The world went away, and all he could think of was two things - the fact he could’ve lost this girl from his life forever through a mixture of stupidity and fate, and a slightly fuzzy memory of the kiss they’d shared at his party. With only these thoughts in his head and little or no room in his vision for anything but her angelic face, the world went away as far as Dick was concerned, as he put his arms around Mac, glad when she let him hug her and even hugged him back.

“I’m so sorry about before,” he whispered in her ear, making her feel all the more emotional.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” she told him right back, a strange reaction perhaps since her apology was for something beyond her control, but still meant just as sincerely.

Still, Mac knew as mad as she could try to be at Dick, she did kind of understand why he acted up to his friends. On top of that, he’d proved today she meant much more to him than even she could ever have imagined, and honestly when she suddenly realised what was about to happen, the memory burned onto her brain of the kiss they’d shared overrode any thoughts of what came after. She wanted to feel it again, that feeling that was warm and comforting, yet intense and overpowering all at the same time, and in the best way.

As Dick put his lips to hers, Mac felt all this and infinitely more, the pair of them completely unaware of the crowd that watched them, some grinning, whooping, and calling, others looking disgusted and appalled by the display. The couple were oblivious to all around them, class divide be damned, they had each other right now, and all was right with the world, at least for a few moments more.


	14. Chapter 14

“Well, if it isn’t one half of Neptune High’s hottest new couple.” Veronica smirked as she opened the front door and found Mac right outside.

“And here I was hoping for a sensible conversation with the only girl friend I actually have.” Mac looked pained, and immediately her friend felt bad for her throwaway comment.

“Come in,” she said, stepping aside. “You’re fine, my dad is working late, so it’s just you, me, and Backup makes three.”

“He’s about the only male that makes sense right now,” said Mac as she flopped down on the couch and made a fuss of the dog that bounded over to see who she was and why she was here.

“Amen to that sister,” joked Veronica with a strange accent and an odd hand gesture that even she wasn’t certain she understood. “Yeah, so... you and Dick,” she said, back to serious in a second as she moved to join her friend on the couch. “I was actually joking when I suggested the two of you were...”

“I know.” Mac nodded, as Backup lost interest and walked away, apparently realising girl talk was coming and not wanting to hear that any more than any other male would. “I honestly don’t know how this happened.” She shook her head. “One minute, he’s this dumb 09er that’s paying me to teach him Math and English, and the next-”

“His tongue is in your mouth?” Veronica finished for her, watching with stifled amusement as Mac tried to hide behind her blue-streaked hair. “Everybody saw, Mac, you can’t deny it.”

“I know,” her friend agreed, “but this wasn’t supposed to happen!” she complained “I’m not this girl, y’know, the kind that just makes out with a guy in public like that. I shouldn’t even like a guy like Dick.”

Mac felt so stupid and so entirely out of her depth. She knew what she was saying was ridiculous and wrong, after all, you couldn’t choose who you liked or loved, who you felt attracted too. That went beyond the class divide, beyond anything else, and she was smart enough to know that. Still, as right as kissing Dick had felt, audience be damned, she also felt kind of wrong about it all. Perhaps her real problem was they really hadn’t got a chance to talk about what happened, and by the time they could have had an opportunity she done the dumb thing and bolted.

“We headed back to class so fast,” she explained. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dick until school let out and by then I was just so freaked out by it all... I ran,” she admitted, somewhat shame-faced at her behaviour. “That’s twice now I’ve run out on him.”

“Twice?” Veronica frowned slightly at that, forgetting for a moment that she was about to share her own tale of kiss-and-bolt.

“There was a thing that happened... a kiss,” Mac admitted, feeling ridiculously girly and embarrassed as she kept her eyes on her hands that rested in her lap, fingers lacing and unlacing as she continued. “At Dick’s birthday party, but then it all kind of went wrong. I don’t even want to think about it, except I can’t help it because... and I can’t believe how cliché this is but when he kissed me,” she said with a sigh as she finally looked at her friend, “I swear, Veronica, it was like I suddenly understood all those awful love songs and lame romantic movies.”

“Must be the day for it,” the blonde replied as she looked back at Mac with an odd smile on her face. “Yeah, so I guess I may as well share, seeing as it’s you,” she realised aloud. “Logan and me, we kind of... no,” she corrected herself, “we did kiss.”

“Wow,” was Mac’s reaction, though honestly she wasn’t as shocked as others might have been, after all, Logan and Veronica had been spending equally as much time together and she and Dick. “So you two are...?”

“I honestly have no idea.” Veronica shook her head as she got up from the couch and walked over into the kitchen, Mac following on behind. “I actually did the running thing too. I was just so floored, I mean, we were always good friends, and then after Lilly... everything was just so awful.” She sighed into the refrigerator before emerging with two bottles of water and handing one to Mac. “Logan was so mad at me and it hurt so much to be enemies. Lately, we found a way to be friends again and then today... it was just this moment,” she tried to explain, “and it seemed weirdly right,” she told her friend as they stood either side of the counter, looking as confused as each other.

“I get it.” Mac nodded. “Trust me, I do,” she said sincerely as she sipped at her water.

“Oh, what is wrong with us, Mac?” her friend asked in earnest, pretending to bang her head repeatedly on the counter top. “We’re the smart chicks,” she gestured between them. “How can we both be falling for dumb 09er pretty boys?”

“Pretty boys?” the brunette echoed with a chuckle at the phrasing.

“You know what I mean.” Veronica rolled her eyes as she pulled herself up to sit on the counter and Mac propped herself on the stool, the two of them contemplating what the hell was happening in their lives lately.

“Well, they do say opposites attract.” Mac sighed as she sipped her water thoughtfully. “I wish it was easier than this. Y’know there is actually a part of me that just wants to drive over to Dick’s house and...” she faltered as she saw Veronica was looking at her, “and grab him and kiss him again and just be happy to be with him, to hell with what everybody else thinks,” she said with more confidence than she could ever truly have in such a situation she was sure.

It took Veronica a moment to respond as she gulped down water then replaced the cap on the bottle and slammed it onto the counter with some force She startled poor Mac into almost choking on her own drink as she glanced at the blonde, wondering what was going on.

“Then do it,” she told her simply, leaving her friend still bemused. “Mac, we had a near-death experience today. I actually had two. I’m learning fast that life is way too short to sit around thinking about what you could be doing,” she explained. “Look at Lilly,” she said, trying not to well up as she spoke. “She’ll never do anything else, never graduate or go to college or get married and have kids or live to be old,” she pointed out. “She should be inspiration enough for us. We have to get out there and do things while we have the chance”

“You’re right,” said Mac, after barely a moments thought, “and I know just what I want to do.”

* * *

“I changed my mind, I don’t want to do it,” declared Mac as she pulled the car up on the Casablancas driveway and looked suddenly afraid.

“Too late, we’re here and we’re doing it,” Veronica insisted, stealing the keys from the ignition before her friend had a chance to protest.

Mac watched her friend climb out of the car and let out a sigh. It was too late now, she had to do this. Hell, it had been her idea, but she really hadn’t thought it through. Spontaneous wasn’t exactly Cindy Mackenzie’s middle name, far from it in fact, though she did like the idea of showing Dick she could surprise him. Despite the fact their relationship had barely started, her mind had already begun spinning with reasons why it might all go wrong.

Mac never really had a boyfriend before, not a real one, and now that it seemed she might be getting one, she feared the worst. It wasn’t as if she were getting close to a person from her peer group, a fellow geek type or whatever. This was Dick Casablancas, a hot 09er who surfed and drank and probably swam in a pool of money like Scrooge McDuck when nobody was around. Mac did computers and barely had a social life, making them hardly the perfect couple.

The fact that Dick had stood there in front of almost the entire school and kissed her in such a way that even the memory of it put a shiver down her spine, that gave Mac serious amounts of hope. Clearly he was willing to overlook their differences in social standing if she was, and Heaven forbid that Mac should come out on the side of the class-divide argument that suggested the two extremes should never mix. Regardless of money and power, they were all human beings after all, and Dick was one very hot human being, with an ability to be so sweet and genuine when he tried.

Mac was smiling by now, and a little more eager to relinquish her grip on the steering wheel of her car that seemed to have been her life line the past couple of minutes. Veronica was right, life was far too short to be afraid. She wanted to date Dick Casablancas, and damn it she was going to. She was also going to go into that house and do what she came here to do, to hell with the consequences.

* * *

“So I just thought ‘to hell with it’, and I kissed her,” Dick recounted the tale to Logan one more time, despite the fact he’d been explaining the exact series of events this morning had brought, pretty much all afternoon and evening.

“Yes, Dick, I know. I was there.” He sighed tiredly, letting his head drop over the back of the couch.

God, he was bored of hearing this tale, especially when he’d been stood not three feet from the scene that his good buddy felt the need to reminisce on constantly. Logan never really thought about Dick being in love, but if he wasn’t now then his friend would be entirely stunned. Girls may be one of his favourite topics of conversation, but rarely was it all about one girl, not even when he was dating Madison. Sure, he bitched a lot about not getting into her underwear, but that Logan considered to be normal teen boy behaviour. The way Dick talked about Mac, it all came out weirdly romantic, something that didn’t quite work in Logan’s head. He really never considered his friend could act this way, but then it had been a very long time sine Logan had thought about the possibilities of himself and Veronica being together either. Still, they had kissed, and the memory of it was burned into his brain so bright that he knew he’d be replaying it for a good few days yet, just trying to figure out how it had happened, why she’d bolted, how she could still make him weak at the knees without even knowing it...?

“Dude, you were totally distracted by Ronnie!” Dick exclaimed, almost as if he’d been reading his friends mind this whole time, instead he was just referring to the scene at school during the bomb scare. “Seriously, man, I don’t get it, but if you want her...” He shrugged, apparently giving Logan permission to date Miss Mars if he wanted to.

“I don’t want her, why would I ever want her?” came the overly-quick response that even he knew sounded like a lie... well, it was a lie.

“You totally just protested way too much!” the blond told him, almost laughing, especially when Logan’s eyes went wide at what he knew to be a paraphrase from Shakespeare coming out of his surfing buddies mouth. “You want her so bad, and hey, if she hadn’t totally had a personality transplant this past year, I’d get it,” Dick declared with a hand over his chest. “She’s hot as hell, man! I’d be tappin’ that if I were you,” he told him seriously before turning his attention back to the TV for perhaps thirty seconds, before Logan was sure they’d be back on the topic of Mac and ‘the kiss’.

“Poetic and romantic as always, Dick,” he said with an eye-roll, barely getting a chance to focus on what the television screen showed when there was a tap on the door and a butler-type came in, looking as serious as ever.

“There are two young ladies here to see you, sir,” he told Dick with no emotion. “One is Miss Mackenzie,” he continued, apparently not entirely pleased that she was here, though Heaven only knew why he should care.

“Hey, send them in, Phillips, it’s totally cool,” said Dick, immediately shutting off the TV and getting to his feet.

Logan wasn’t quite sure how to react, as he realised the only sensible option for a female friend of Mac was most likely Veronica Mars. Lo and behold, he was proven right as the two girls came through the door almost as one, the blonde looking barely surprised to see him and offering him such a smile that he forgot what day of the week it was... again.

“Hey.” A little wave accompanied Mac’s greeting as she looked nervously at Dick, her confidence coming and going in the oddest waves apparently as she faced him.

“Macky!” he declared, apparently thrilled by her arrival and making her feel a whole lot better as they met in the middle of the room and awkwardly greeted each other.

Their first meeting after that explosive kiss was going to be strange, since they’d spoken not a word from then to now. Still, they were happy to se each other, that much was obvious, and felt about as silly as each other in this odd situation, which helped both their sets of nerves.

“We were just... nowhere near the neighbourhood.” She laughed lightly at her own odd phrasing, as she glanced Veronica’s way and realised she and Logan looked even more awkward than them. “But I remembered you saying I should come by sometime, for non-study. You said if I brought my swimsuit you’d show me the pool, and since I kinda missed out at your party...” she rushed out, wondering why she ever thought it was a good idea to strip half naked in front of two guys she barely knew all of a sudden, despite the fact one was apparently her boyfriend now.

Dick himself was clearly thrilled at the prospect and looked at his buddy with a huge grin on his face.

“Hey, Logan. I just heard the word 'party',” he said happily.

His friend looked between Dick and Veronica before he smiled;

“Yeah, sounds good.”


	15. Chapter 15

Cindy Mackenzie felt so strangely confident as she stood by the diving board at the side of the Casblancas pool. Her audience was only three people, which was probably helping with the not being so embarrassed, but even so, just a few short weeks ago she would not even have entertained the idea of slipping into her black one-piece and parading in front of any of her fellow students from Neptune High. Now, here she was, a smile on her face as she looked across at Veronica who’d just surfaced on the other side of the water, and Dick and Logan laid out on sun-loungers to one side. She wasn’t a different person, in fact, Mac felt more like herself than ever. Perhaps the new-found confidence came from just being accepted for who she was, at last, she thought to herself, as she executed a perfect dive into the water.

“For somebody who didn’t want to get out of the car, you’ve relaxed, Miss Mac,” said Veronica as she swam over to her side, both girls grinning like idiots.

“I never do this.” The brunette shook her head, pushing her soaked hair out of her face as they stood their treading water. “I never just be me and have fun like this. It’s so weird.” She laughed. “With Dick I can just let go... I think that’s what I love most about him,” she said, as she looked across as the odd couple shared a wave.

“Love?” Veronica echoed, making a real effort not to sound too stunned or let her eyes go too wide, after all, she didn’t want to make Mac feel bad for what she’d said.

Still, it seemed kind of a weird concept, for two people so different and opposite as far as Veronica could tell, to be using words like ‘love’ for each other.

“Please don’t tell him I said that,” Mac squeaked, suddenly realising what she’d said.

Honestly, she hadn’t thought about it much, the words had just come rolling out of her mouth without a care. Now she was all too aware of the fact she’d just implied she loved Dick Casablancas. The idea of it still seemed a little crazy, didn’t quite compute in her brain, and yet at the same time it made perfect sense somehow.

“It’s okay,” she was quickly assured by Veronica. “I promise, I won’t say a word,” she swore, moving to pull herself up onto the edge of the pool and kicking her feet in the water whilst she waited for Mac to join her.

“So, what about you and Logan?” she asked, squinting against the bright light of the sun as she faced her friend. “I saw you talking before.”

“He seems to be sweeping our two minutes in heaven under the rug.” The blonde rolled her eyes, nonchalant as she ever was. “I don’t want to be the one to bring it up,” she added, with a look on her face that almost suggested she felt bad about that.

“Do you like him?” Mac asked curiously, watching Veronica watching Logan across the way, and waiting patiently for an answer that she really wasn’t certain of.

It would be odd for Veronica and Logan to date, after what she knew to be a very tough year of the pair being so mean to each other. On the other hand, before Lilly died, they’d been half of Neptune High’s Fab Four, close as any friends could be, so it wouldn’t really be so strange for them to want to be together.

As Veronica continued to stare in silence, Mac opened her mouth to repeat her question, or at least say something so the conversation could move on. She never got a chance to do either, as a grin suddenly took over the blonde’s face and she dropped herself back into the pool.

“Race you to the other side!” she yelled, splashing water into Mac’s face as she swam away at the fastest speed she could muster.

Her friend squealed in a much girlier fashion than had ever been heard from Mac, before she dived in after Veronica and tried her best to catch up.

Half way across the pool, they were neck and neck. Laughing all the way as they raced. This caught the boys attention, and Dick seemed to be an entirely enthusaic cheerleader for his girlfriend.

“Go Macky!” he called, doing some weird little seated dance as she went by just a stroke ahead of Veronica. “Woohoo!” he yelled as she appeared to be winning, and Logan couldn’t help but laugh as he stared at his friend beside him.

“Geez, Dick, could you be any more into this chick?” he asked with an amused grin, though honestly he was actually loving this.

Mac would be good for Dick, and the fact that he’d chosen to be with her, reputation be damned, only proved what Logan had always wondered to be true - Dick wasn’t quite as shallow and superficial as he pretended to be.

“Seriously, dude, Mac is the best,” the blond declared, not even caring who knew it. “She’s so nothing like Madison, which I guess makes sense ‘cause she drove me crazy!” he declared loudly, wondering if his new girlfriend could hear him as she flashed him a smile from her place in the water, splash-fighting with Veronica, before racing her across the water once again.

“No woman is perfect,” he was reminded then by Logan who he knew had learnt it the hard way.

“Mac is close,” said Dick determinedly, as he fixed his friend with a look. “Check her out, dude,” he pointed. “Who knew that hot bod was hiding under her geek-wear?!” He smiled widely. “And she’s so smart and cool and stuff. I don’t know, man, I really like her,” he said, as honest as Logan had ever seen or heard him.

It was still a weird concept, imagining that Dick had layers and real feelings and all, but Logan liked it. He was pleased to know the one friend who stuck by him through all kinds of crap was decent underneath his jackass exterior.

“Then why are you sitting here talking to me?” He smiled, shoving him in the shoulder. “Go get her,” he instructed, an order Dick willingly followed as he got up from his seat and launched himself into the pool, half-soaking Logan as he caused a real splash.

As Dick swam towards the girls, he went down under water, shocking Mac to the core as came up from beneath her, so she was sat on his shoulders when he emerged. Veronica laughed at their antics, feeling uncomfortable in a moment when the splashing stopped and the kissing started. Swimming away to the side, she hauled herself up out of the pool, Logan lending her a hand and gesturing for her to make use of Dick’s abandoned sun-lounger beside him, if she wanted.

“Yep, that’s disturbing,” she declared as she glanced back at the almost under-water make out session across the way. “How’re you doing?” she then asked Logan as she turned her attention back to him, settling herself on the sun-lounger and wringing some of the water out of her hair.

“Burning a little in the sun,” he said thoughtfully. “Wishing the impromptu pool party had happened at my house, so I didn’t have to choose shorts from Dick’s ‘I never wore them 'cause they suck’ collection,” he said, inadvertently drawing her attention to an area of his body she’d do better not focusing on right now.

“I don’t think your shorts are exactly attracting all the attention right now,” she began, before spotting the look on his face that was heading straight for filthy. “Bad topic choice,” she said quickly changing tack. “So, what’s the Echolls verdict on the happy couple?” she asked, leaning right back on the lounger and closing her eyes against the suns glare.

“Mac seems cool,” Logan said thoughtfully. “I don’t really know her that well, but hey, my buddy’s happy, works for me,” he said with a smile that was gone before Veronica ever opened her eyes to the sound of his next words. “You’re dating the Deputy, right?”

“Dating’s a big word,” she said fast, feeling herself start to burn under the intense gaze of her old friend, doing way more damage than the sun ever could, at least it felt that way. “I guess, maybe. It’s not that serious, necessarily, I just...” she started to ramble, and hated herself for doing so, but thinking of Leo and looking at Logan all hot and half-naked after that kiss they shared yesterday, it was scrambling the poor girl’s brain. “This is just awkward,” she said with a shake of her head, as she moved to get off the lounger and presumably run away... again.

“Veronica,” said Logan, reaching out to her to stop her leaving, but whether she would have argued or not, neither of them would ever find out as Dick and Mac emerged from the water together, all smiles and laughter, and breaking the would-be moment between the other odd couple.

“Hey, who’s up for water polo?” the blond asked, rubbing his hands together, apparently excited at the idea of the game, and for no apparent reason that anyone else could see.

Logan looked at Veronica, who stared back at him uncertainly.

“What do you say, Ronnie?” he asked her with a smile that reminded her of the old days, and thankfully swept all of the previous moments awkwardness away for now.

“I say... these guys are going down,” she said in a tone that suggested a real smack down was imminent.

Unfortunately, no sooner had the group all plunged into the pool, getting ready to play their game, than the butler appeared through the French doors, clearing his throat loudly in an attempt to get Dick’s attention.

“There is another young lady here to see you, sir,” he said as the young Mr Casablancas turned around. “Miss Sinclair,” he said coolly, and Mac was at least pleased to note that Phillips seemed even less impressed about the bottle-blonde’s arrival than he ever was about her own.

“Madison?” Dick looked stunned by the revelation that his ex was here. “What the hell, dude, we totally broke up,” he said, as if it were news, as if everybody there didn’t already know that fact most definitely!

Mac shared a look with Veronica that told the blonde her friend was just a little worried by the turn of events. She trusted in Dick to treat her right, of course she did, but his ex was hot and way more in his league from the point of view of 09er status. If she clicked her fingers, Mac wanted to believe Dick could resist, but honestly, her stomach was in knots within a second of the name ‘Miss Sinclair’ being spoken.

“Should I bring her through, sir, or-” the butler began, only to be interrupted.

“No, it’s cool, Phillips,” he said quickly as he hauled himself back out of the water. “I’ll come in,” he said, grabbing a towel on his way across the patio and drying off his face and hair some as he headed inside.

“You okay?” Veronica asked Mac as they followed suit, getting out of the pool alongside Logan.

“Uh-huh,” the brunette replied, though she looked far from it, and even Logan had a bad feeling about this whole thing.

Madison was a bitch, but she was also manipulative to a higher degree than most girls he’d ever met in his life. Dick seemed to be so into Mac but there was no telling what could happen if the evil blonde bimbo that was Miss Sinclair decided she wanted her play-thing back.

“You want me to go make sure Dick’s not... well, being a dick?” he offered kindly, something that made Veronica all the more confused - she wasn’t used to the softer side of Logan yet, she hadn’t seen much of it this past year or more.

“Thanks, but no.” Mac shook her head as she got to her feet. “I got it.” She smiled bravely, despite the fact it was obvious she was entirely unhappy about this whole situation.

Left alone on the side of the pool as Mac walked away, Logan turned towards Veronica and shook his head.

“Why do I think there’s more to this than just Madison being Dick’s ex?” he asked her, but she didn’t take her eyes off her friend’s retreating form as she answered.

“Because there’s always more to it.” She sighed, only hoping this afternoon would end as happily as it had started - at this point, she highly doubted it could.

* * *

“What do want, Madison?” Dick sighed tiredly, not really wanting to have to deal with his ex right now.

He was having a really great time with Mac and Logan, and even Ronnie was being like she used to be, actually fun and stuff. The last think he needed was Madison showing up and ruining everything.

“Come on, Dick, enough with the act already,” she rolled her eyes, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “That stunt at school? What were trying to prove by kissing... that,” she said with distaste, unaware that the brunette in question was just beyond the doors, hiding on the patio and listening in.

“Hey, you don’t talk about Mac that way,” she heard Dick snap, her expression going from a deep frown to a huge grin in a second as she heard those words and the indignation with which they were spoken. “She’s like a gazillion times better than you,” he said strongly, so mad at Madison right now that, were she a guy, he’d have punched her out already.

“How?” she snorted out her answer, truly at a loss as to how anyone could be better than her in any way, she was just that conceited. “You know you’re committing social suicide by being with her, and she’ll never make you happy,” she reminded Dick, as she stepped in closer to him. “We could still fix this.” She smiled in a way that used to turn Dick on and now just made his skin crawl. “We’ll pass it off as a joke, a kind of ‘She’s All That’ thing. Then you and me, we can pick up where we left off,” she suggested, reaching out a hand to push his wet hair off his face.

He caught her wrist before her fingers ever made contact, pushing her back with just enough force to make her stumble on her heels a little. He had no wish to hurt her, he didn’t hit women however bitchy they were, but she needed to be told a few home truths at least.

“What’s the matter, Mad?” he asked her with a wicked smile. “Older guy decide you weren’t worth the jail time if he got caught?” he asked, making Mac want to laugh out loud beyond the curtains.

Sure, she was all for everyone being treated equally and well, all life choices to be accepted and not ridiculed. Unfortunately, Madison really did not deserve much in the way of humanity, since she really didn’t display evidence of having any herself. She had everything in the world she could ever want, everything Mac should have apparently, and yet she still wasn’t happy. She couldn’t have the one thing she really wanted, because he now wanted Mac instead.

Stepping out of her hiding place with a confidence she was just now learning how to use, Mac walked up to Dick without even glancing towards Madison.

“Hey,” she said with a smile as she got closer and he automatically wrapped an arm around her waist. “I was wondering where you got to.” She smiled, glad when he looked pleased to see her.

Mac wasn’t certain if the kiss that came next was to affirm their new-found relationship, to make Madison feel worse, or to actually just show Mac how much she really meant to him. Whatever his reason, it was yet another knee-trembling, heart-thumping moment, that Mac couldn’t get enough of.

“Get a room!” Madison huffed, crossing her arms over her chest as she glanced away from the display.

“Get out of my house, bitch,” she was soon ordered by Dick as he finally parted from Mac and turned to face his ex once again. “I’m busy, with my friends... and my girlfriend,” he said proudly, as Mac leaned into the side of him, unable to do anything else after that kiss!

“You’re going to be the biggest laughing stock in town.” The blonde before them had thunder in her expression and practically stomped her foot with frustration as she turned to storm away.

“Screw you!” Dick called behind her. “Not that anyone will!”

“Dick!” he was soon berated by his girlfriend, however lightly, after all, she couldn’t really feel bad for Madison Sinclair, it just wasn’t possible.

“I can’t believe I ever dated her.” The blond shook his head, looking genuinely puzzled by his own thought process at the time.

Mac watched Madison disappear from view and then glanced up at Dick who was doing the same thing.

“But you did,” she said, looking up at him from underneath his arm, “and there must have been a reason,” she said thoughtfully.

“Whatever,” he said as he glanced down at her. “Can’t even remember.” He shrugged, as he gazed down into her eyes. “Right now, it’s all about you, babe,” he promised her with a smile as he moved in for another kiss that blew her mind.


	16. Chapter 16

Mac was finding it increasingly difficult to complain about Dick’s methods of distraction. Though she had come here to help him with his Math homework, and knew by now they should be almost done with the page full of problems he must complete, the only progress her boyfriend was making had to do with bases rather than fractions.

Unfortunately for Mac, she was weak when it came to Dick and the way he made her feel. When exactly she had started to feel this way about him, she had no idea, but she did know that when he kissed her that first time, she’d never felt anything like it. The second perfect moment, outside of Neptune High in front of the whole entire school, that had completely knocked the wind out of her sails. Two weeks later, as it was now, and each and every time his lips met hers, Mac’s head spun in a new way that she just couldn’t get enough of. Making out was what 09er couples did under the bleachers or whatever, Mac had never considered she would be one of them, and yet such an activity she had enjoyed this past week.

Right now, she and Dick were spread out on the couch together at his house, sharing deep kisses as her fingers tangled in his blond hair, and his own sought out skin where her shirt met her pants. They didn’t go very far yet, and he seemed mindful of rushing her, which surprised Mac just a little. She had kind of thought that Dick would be trying harder to get someplace with her, but first base was good for now, good for a girl that was somewhat inexperienced, and not just in the physical way of things. Mac hadn’t really ever dated or had a boyfriend to speak of, and Dick seemed almost honoured to be her first in that way when she told him. He didn’t laugh at her, didn’t call her dumb or lame for being less-than-educated on the ways of dating and such.

‘You teach me brainy stuff, and I’ll teach you this,’ he’d told her sweetly. ‘Fair trade, right?’

The way he said it, with that sweet smile that made her giddy, Mac couldn’t do anything but agree to the suggestion, not least because it would be kind of inappropriate for him to pay her with money anymore now they were dating. Now, he helped her feel less awkward in social situations and took things slow with her behind closed doors.

Of course, there were times when Dick pushed his luck a little. He was a teenage boy after all, and he was always going to make a move if he thought he might get away with it. Kissing Mac breathless, he slid his hand further up inside her shirt, finger tips making contact with his lacey target when she pulled away a little. To his credit, he hid his disappointment well, and removed his hand without a word, the moment now over.

Mac smiled at his sweet behaviour. She didn’t mind him trying his luck so much, since she knew she only had to give him a little sign she wasn’t ready for that and he would stop. In her heart she knew that if he could wait long enough, she would let him get what he wanted, because deep down she did want it too, she was just mindful of rushing headlong into something she might regret in the end. It had happened too many times to other girls she knew and had heard about.

“We should really teach you some Math tonight,” she said as her breath slowly came back to her. “It’s what I came here for”

“Yeah.” He sighed as he held her close still and they stayed together on the couch despite the fact she had just said they should move and try to do something constructive. “But really, you came for the extra-curricular activities, right?” he said, as he encouraged to stay curled up under his arm as she was now, and kissed the top of her head.

“Maybe.” She laughed lightly, as she stayed still for now. “It probably would’ve helped if we’d got the studying done first, but I know that’s partly my fault,” she admitted. “I meant to be here earlier but Veronica needed a favour.”

“Ronnie always needs a favour.” He rolled his eyes. “Mostly, I wish she’d just do Logan a favour and lay one on him already.” He shook his head. “But hey, I guess it’s not always that simple.”

“Hmm,” said Mac thoughtfully, not entirely listening. “I’m a little worried about her, Veronica, I mean,” she explained, sitting up some so she could see her boyfriends face. “Did you go to a party at Shelley Pomroy’s house, a year ago?” she checked curiously, not really considering until now that Dick had probably been there.

“She tell you what happened there?” he asked, looking as confused as ever, which only served to make things more mixed up for his gifrleind.

“Who? Shelley?” Mac asked with a frown.

“No, Ronnie,” her boyfriend told her. “Did she tell you what happened at Shelley’s? ‘Cause, dude, I’d be seriously stunned if she remembered after everything.” He shook his head as he recalled the night in question and the state Veronica Mars had been in.

The look on Mac’s face now suggested she had no clue what he was talking about, which begged the question, why had Mac even brought up the party that would have been a million miles away from her social circle? Back then, Dick had still been with Madison, and trying to get her into bed if memory served. He barely knew who Mac was back then.

“Dick, what happened to Veronica at Shelley’s party?” she asked him then, pretty sure that something had after the way her friend had reacted when they talked about the event.

Mac knew if she wanted the truth she ought to ask Veronica herself, but if what Dick said was true, it was unlikely she recalled the details anyway. There was a chance Dick would know, and if he could tell Mac they might even be able to be of some help to the teen detective, who rarely if ever needed assistance at all.

“I don’t know exactly.” He shrugged, looking just a little shifty and that worried Mac somewhat until apparently he felt compelled to confess all. “Look, I’ll ‘fess up, the whole deal, but you can’t tell anyone, Macky, you just can’t.”

“Okay.” She nodded slowly, wondering what the hell she was about to hear, but pretty sure she wanted to, regardless of what came next.

Mac trusted Dick, rightly or wrongly, and she really loved having Veronica for a friend. This truth, whatever it might be, she had to know it, and if it were truly necessary to keep it a secret for the sake of her boyfriend, her friend, or anyone else, that was what she would do.

“Okay.” Dick sighed as he sat straight on the couch and recalled the chain of events he’d not spoken of to anyone since they occurred. “So, Veronica was kinda wasted at Shelley’s. More than wasted, I think maybe somebody spiked her drink or whatever... not me,” he added quickly and definitely, “but I know some guys who had some stuff they might’ve used on her.” He looked guilty despite of the fact it was not his own crime he was confessing to, but then he was part of that crowd and felt tainted by association somehow, Mac realised.

“She was drugged.” She nodded. “Do I want to know what happened after that?” she asked, feeling nauseous on her friends behalf.

“I guess,” said Dick with a shrug of his shoulders, looking at Mac and suddenly realising what she thought. “Oh, no way, nobody did... that,” he said definitely. “She probably would’ve let just about any guy do whatever, but she was so wasted and y’know a lot of the guys are asses, even me sometimes, but none of us would-”

“I know you wouldn’t,” Mac said definitely, though honestly she spoke only of Dick in that moment and of none of his friends.

Besides, whilst she could not believe he would ever do anything so monstrous himself, she was not so naive as to think drunken boys would have unwittingly taken advantage of the situation Veronica had apparently found herself in at Shelley Pomroy’s party last year. Still, she left it at that and allowed Dick to continue his story.

“So, Ronnie’s way out of it, making out with every guy, a couple of girls, the garage door... she was a mess!” he declared as he recalled the scene. “Logan started to get really pissed at her, I guess because of the whole Lilly thing and because she pretty much threw herself at everyone but him. Y’know, I think he had a secret crush on her for, like, ever.”

That part stunned Mac just a little, but perhaps not as much as it should’ve. Veronica and Logan were good friends back in the day, when she was dating Duncan and he dated Lilly. Lately, with the red-hot resentment between them cooling down, something was definitely happening between them of a friendly nature, Mac was sure of it. If what Dick said was true, it could easily be more than that before long.

“What happened next?” she urged her boyfriend to continue, sure there had to be more to the evening than this, or neither he nor Veronica would be making such a big deal out of the event.

“Well, Logan was getting so mad, and it was getting a little crazy,” he admitted. “So we took Ronnie to the poolhouse to sleep off whatever the hell she had in her,” he explained. “So, we’re like tucking her in and all, and Logan, who by the way is also pretty wasted, is tellin’ me all this stuff about how he loved her from the start and stuff. I dunno, we were all kinda out of it,” he admitted. “So then somebody yelled that Beav was spewing up his guts outside and I figured Big Bro should go check on the poor little guy,” he explained, making Mac smile inspite of the apparent seriousness of the rest of the tale - brotherly love was cute.

“So, something might’ve happened with Logan and Veronica after you left?” she asked, finding the concept less surprising than she might’ve.

After all, they used to be friends, a long time ago, Dick had just admitted that he always believed his best bud had a crush on the blonde, and to top it all off, the UST surrounding the pair lately was so thick you could almost physically see it! It wouldn’t be a huge surprise to find out they shared a kiss whilst under the influence of drink and possibly drugs.

“Something might’ve happened?” Dick echoed his girlfriends words, shaking his head as he grinned. “Something did happen,” he assured her. “And not just anything, the thing,” he said with an emphasis and a look that could only mean one thing. “At least I’m pretty sure. They were making out like crazy when I came back to check on them, and clothes were flying and all so...”

“Oh,” was all Mac could say to that.

She could not imagine for a moment that Veronica would behave that way in normal circumstances. They’d become good friends recently and she believed she knew her well enough to know that wasn’t the blondes way of handling herself. Still, if she had got drunk, or worse been drugged, that would explain things, and it was highly possible she didn’t even remember the night she spent with Logan Echolls. Surely she would have mentioned by now if she did.

“You okay, babe?” Dick asked Mac, pulling her from a minefield of thoughts.

“Yeah, I am,” she assured him, forcing a smile. “Did Logan ever talk about that night, about what happened?” she asked, curious as to whether he recalled the events any better than Veronica could.

“I asked him about it, but he pretty much threatened to kill me if I ever talked about it again,” he explained. “So you cannot tell him that I told you, Macky,” he said, looking serious as he had ever been - clearly keeping his friendship with Logan safe was a very big deal to him.

“I won’t,” Mac promised him faithfully, though she could not make the same promise when it came to sharing this tale with Veronica.


	17. Chapter 17

“Veronica?” Mac called as she came into the offices of Mars Investigations.

She had already tried her friends apartment, hoping to catch her before school and talk to her but when no-one appeared to be in the next logical place seemed to be here.

“Hey.” The blonde smiled from behind the desk as her friend walked in. “Somebody’s up and at ‘em early this morning,” she noted, though the same could be said about Veronica herself, of course, had she not in actuality been up most of the night helping her dad crack cases.

“Yeah, I guess it is early, but... um, well...” she stammered and stumbled over what she moment to say, feeling entirely weird about this whole thing.

The tale Dick had told her about the events of Shelley Pomroy’s party a year ago now were really none of her business, but it seemed to her that Veronica might not know what occurred that night and surely it was even more wrong for Mac to know if her friend did not. What kind of friend would she really be if she didn’t ensure Veronica had all the facts?

“Mac, what’s up?” she asked, peering up over her laptop screen. “Something obviously is. Do I have to tip you up or are you gonna spill on your own?” she added with a smile as she closed down the lid of her computer.

“Okay.” The brunette sighed as she sat across for, her friend. “You remember you had me work on that video for you, the one with Carmen...”

“Obviously, yes,” said Veronica with a single nod, smile faltering just a little now.

“Well... and please don’t hate me for this, but I noticed you seemed kind of weird when you talked about that night, about Shelley’s party,” she admitted. “So, I kinda asked Dick what happened there.”

“Why would I hate you for that, Mac?” her friend asked her with a smile that was by now clearly forced, her face heaving grown pale at the very mention of the party in question. “I can’t imagine he knows what happened to me that night,” she said, shuddering at the vague memories she had herself.

Veronica didn’t scare easily and very little phased her, but talking about this, something she hadn’t even told her father about, made her feel immediately sick inside. That morning after the party, she awoke missing two vital things - her underwear, and any memory of the latter half of the evening and night that followed. In truth it appeared, she’d lost a third thing too, her virginity, and to some nameless, faceless stranger who had taken advantage of her in a presumably drug-induced state.

“Veronica, what do you think happened to you?” her friend asked her then, snapping her attention back from the past to the present.

“I don’t think, Mac, I know,” she replied coldly. “I was roofied, and I was raped,” she said with a crack in her voice that was rarely if ever heard.

Shock registered on Mac’s face, that Veronica had expected, but the words that followed were a complete surprise to the teen PI.

“Um, I know you don’t remember much, and I don’t want to make you mad,” she said in a rush, “but from what Dick said, you weren’t exactly unwilling when Logan-”

“Logan?!” the gasp from Veronica was most likely audible a mile away as her eyes went so wide, Mac was surprised they didn’t roll clean out of her head. “What does Logan have to do with what happened to me?”

Mac felt nauseous and more than a little awkward as she glanced away and then back at the stunned expression of the blonde.

“Logan is what happened to you, Veronica,” she explained. “From what Dick said, last he saw, you two were... y’know, getting up close and personal, in the poolhouse.”

Veronica’s mind worked a mile a minute as she recounted events. What Mac said made sense since it was the bed in the poolhouse that she’d woken up in, though she had no recollection of Logan or Dick being anywhere around at any time in the evening. Sure, she’d seen them, amongst a hundred other people that she’d seen, but that was all, she hadn’t even talked to them that she remembered. If this story was true, she’d done a hell of a lot more than talk with Logan.

On the upside, it would appear nobody forced themselves on her, but that didn’t explain how she got drugged. She didn’t want to believe that Logan spiked her drink, she just couldn’t think that of him, not after everything. He could be stupid, even cruel sometimes, but he wasn’t evil like that, he couldn’t be, and most especially not to her, she was certain of it.

“This is a lot for you to take in,” Mac realised as she watched a hundred emotions play across Veronica’s face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve got involved in this-”

“No.” Veronica interrupted, as a single tear escape from her eye and she wiped it away immediately, not knowing exactly what it was for anyway. “No, I’m glad you did. If what you’re saying is true, well, I’m not sure what it means.”

“Maybe if you talked to Logan?” Mac suggested. “I mean, I’m not sure how much he remembers, Dick said he was pretty out of it too, and that he wouldn’t talk about it after.”

“Hmm,” a non-descript noise came from Veronica as she nodded her head only to prove she was hearing anything Mac said.

She was right, she did have to talk to Logan about this. Maybe she would find out that she went willingly into his arms that night, maybe he knew how she came to be in such a state in the first place. Still, she was mad as hell at him if he was the man that took her virginity from her, not necessarily for the act itself since it seemed neither of them had been in the right state of mind to made a good choice, but more because he’d let her believe something much worse had happened, and because he hadn’t even bothered to be there in the morning when she woke up.

* * *

Mac and Veronica ended up travelling into school together and were there a good while before the first bell ever rung. The blonde was a force to be reckoned with as she stalked down the main corridor, Mac having to hurry some to keep up with her and rounding the next corner just in time to see Veronica side swipe Logan from his locker and push him straight into the girls bathroom before he had a chance to protest, and without anyone really noticing either it seemed.

The only other student to take note of what had just happened seemed to be Dick who was stood talking to Logan at the moment of the attack.

“Dude, what the hell?!” he exclaimed, as Mac hurried over to him. “Mac, what just happened?” he checked with his girlfriend, who winced at the question.

“I might’ve told Veronica what you told me, about Shelley’s party,” she admitted, looking just a little nervous, half because she might have given Dick a reason to be mad at her, and half because she had no idea what was happening beyond the bathroom door between two people who had quickly become good friends of hers.

Crossing the hallway without a word, Dick and Mac pushed on the door only to find it wedged shut. The pair listened in, not knowing what else to do.

“What’s going on, Ronnie?” Logan asked beyond the door, smirking that annoyingly sexy smirk of his as he leant back on the counter top between two sinks. “You bring me in here to have your wicked way with me?” he leered, but Veronica clearly wasn’t finding it funny.

“Not funny. Especially not now,” she said coldly, serious expression on her usually pretty face and arms folded across her chest. “What happened at Shelley Pomroy’s party, Logan?” she asked him straight, knowing from experience that the straight forward approach was usually best in this kind of situation.

“I dunno, we all got wasted?” He shrugged, suddenly finding the counter top beneath his fingers really interesting.

“Don’t, Logan,” she urged him, taking a step forward, her eyes begging him to play fair on this as he glanced up at her once again. “Please, just tell me the truth. I don’t remember anything, and I need you to tell me, please, what happened to me?” she asked him, looking as young and innocent as the first day he met her, and clearly upset about this.

It took Logan by surprise, since he honestly believed she remembered, at least as much as he did. Now, it seemed, he was to be proven wrong. A year after the event he had chosen to pretend never happened, he must drag up the past and relive his bittersweet memories that apparently Veronica did not share.

“You really don’t know, do you?” he realised, unsure whether that made matters better or worse as he turned it over in his head.

“Did something happen between us?” she asked again, still not getting the answer she desperately needed. “Did it?” she repeated, tears in her eyes as they stared at each other. “Logan...”

“Yeah,” he said suddenly and perhaps a little too loudly. “Yes, something happened,” he confirmed. “Everything happened,” he said, his meaning obvious now and Dick and Mac’s story confirmed.

“Oh my God!” the blonde gasped, turning her back on Logan as her hand covered her mouth and a hundred emotions coursing through her body all at once - shock, relief, sadness, joy...

“Veronica,” he said, reaching out to her, fingers barely making contact with her shoulder when she spun back around, tears streaming down her face that neither of them could identify as being good or bad.

“Do you realise I spent the past year thinking I was raped?” she told him, not sure whether to be mad about that or just relieved that her ordeal as over, that the truth was out and it wasn’t as bad as she thought it could be.

“What?” Logan gasped at that, having had no clue about any of this. “I didn’t... Veronica, I swear to God, if I knew you thought that, I would’ve said something,” he swore to her. “I just... I just thought you were acting like it never happened,” he admitted, having been certain that was her reason for never bringing it up, it had certainly been his. “We weren’t exactly friends by then-”

“Then why, Logan?” she cut in, scrubbing tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “Why did we...? I mean, I know why I did, somebody clearly spiked my drink or something,” she told him, eliciting a hollow laugh from him, her currently undefined friend.

“Thanks,” he said sadly, taking her words to heart, and she immediately realised what she had implied.

“I don’t mean I’d have to be drugged to...” she began, feeling awkward about saying she would or she wouldn’t want to be with him that way again, it was strange enough wrapping her head around the fact he had been her first time, and she didn’t recall any of it. “You know what I meant,” she said, closing her eyes and wishing this whole situation could just go away now - unfortunately, life didn’t work that way.

“Veronica, I don’t know if somebody spiked your drink, I swear I don’t,” he promised her, daring to step in closer and put his hands to her shoulders, as he looked down on her with honesty and sincerity both in his eyes and words as he spoke. “All I know is, I was drunk, you were practically passing out on anybody that would hold onto you, so me and Dick carried you out to the poolhouse,” he explained, making sure she understood every word he said and believed it, because it was the truth. “I wanted you to sleep it off somewhere safe, I... I didn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“And then?” she asked shakily, needing to know more and yet feeling strange about asking.

“I don’t know, Veronica.” He sighed, one hand going back through is hair as he thought it over. “Honestly? I’m kinda fuzzy on the details, but I do know that, at the time, we both wanted what happened,” he assured her. “I left in the morning because I panicked about facing you, but I would never have-”

“I know you wouldn’t,” she cut in, certain of that at least. “I wouldn’t accuse you of that, Logan, I couldn’t,” she told him.

“Good to know you don’t think I’m completely evil.” He smiled slightly at his own joke even though he ought to have known it was bad timing and in poor taste right now.

“That’s not funny,” she told him seriously, as she gazed up at him. “Logan, we’ve been through a lot, apart and together,” she reminded him, as if he didn’t already know. “At least we both know the truth now.”

“Do we?” he asked as he looked down at her, voice softening of its own accord as he continued. “You remember less than I do about that night... Y’know, you actually said you loved me,” he reminded her, though she almost definitely had no recollection of those words.

Veronica swallowed hard as he reached out and wiped a stray tear from her cheek, fighting to remember saying those words but coming up empty. Still, she knew it was not beyond the realms of possibility. She had always loved Logan on some level, since they were twelve years old. They fought, they bickered, they acted like they hated each other this past year, but the flame never really died, it couldn’t.

“What did you say?” she asked in a soft voice that she barely recognised as her own, his hand lingering at her face as they stood close together still gazing at each other.

“That I love you, Veronica,” he said, present tense completely intended, as he leaned into her. “I always did. I always will,” he promised as his lips finally met hers in a sweet kiss.

Beyond the door, the school bell rang, and Mac and Dick looked first at the door that was all but locked and then at each other.

“It’s too quiet in there,” she said worriedly. “What do you think happened?”

“With Ronnie and Logan?” Her boyfriend shook his head. “Anything is possible,” he said, a little nervous about what the outcome of this might be.

The two of them used their combined strength to push on the door and eventually with much effort it flew open. Not that it bothered Logan and Veronica to have an impromptu audience as they stood their wrapped in each others arms, still kissing like to was going out of style.

“Well, who doesn’t love a happy ending?” Mac shrugged as she smiled up at Dick.

“Ugh, gross!” declared a voice, and the pair realised Madison had squeezed past into the bathroom, spotting Logan and Veronica and reacting with abject horror. “What is wrong with the people in this town lately?” she said with distaste as she turned around to leave as quickly as she appeared.

“I totally can’t believe I used to date that,” declared her ex as he watched the snooty blonde hurry off down the hall. “You are way different, and so the best girlfriend ever,” he told Mac as they came back out through the door with his arm around her shoulders.

As he leaned down to kiss her lips he realised she wasn’t paying attention. Instead her eyes were on Madison’s retreating form until the other girl was out of sight. The look on Mac’s face when she looked back at Dick was far from happy.

“What’s up, babe?” he asked her, looking a little worried by now.

“It’s just...” she began, only to realise there was no time for a big explanation right now, not with first period about to start, besides which the school hall was no place for a serious talk about anything. “We’ll talk about it later,” she said quickly, planting a kiss on his cheek and practically bolting down the hall to class.

Dick watched her go, a frown on his face. “What the hell just happened?”


	18. Chapter 18

Something was up, that much Dick was sure of. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite smart enough to have figured out exactly what this particular problem entailed, only that it existed and it was making his Macky sad. She’d been quiet all day, most especially since they were in the school hall, first watching Logan and Veronica make nice, and then telling Madison to go screw herself. Mac had looked kinda odd then, and ever since had been weirdly quiet which was scaring the hell out of her new boyfriend, though he wasn’t about to tell her that.

On the drive from school to his house, for a double-feature study and makeout session, things hadn’t improved, and as Dick pulled the car onto the drive, he knew he was going to have to say something.

“Look, babe, something is so not right here,” he told her as he shut off the engine and shifted to face her. “I know something’s up, but unless you tell me what it is, I got nothin’.” He shrugged in a over-dramatic gesture to prove just how entirely out of the loop he felt right now.

“I’m fine,” Mac lied, knowing she was doing it and hating it, but unable to find the words to explain what was going on inside her head.

She knew this morning she should explain, had spent all day thinking it over, planning how best to have this conversation with him, or whether she should have it at all. Truth was, she was still at a loss even now, after hours of agonising. He deserved the truth, if they were going to have any kind of relationship, it was wrong to keep her secret from him, but how she was supposed to broach the subject she had no clue. It had blown her mind when she’d first found out, there was no telling what Dick would make of it.

Mac was out of the car before he had a chance to ask her anything else and with Philips having seen their approach, the front door was already open for her to hurry through without Dick. She was at the table, Math books out in front of her before Dick even made it into the room, but he wasn’t going to let this go, and she ought to have known it.

“Macky, come on,” he urged her. “Something is so obviously up,” he told her. “You’re the brainy one, you have to explain it to me, ‘cause I’m not smart enough to figure out what I did wrong on my own.” He shook his head, looking totally solemn and sad, Mac felt sick.

Not only was she making it look like she didn’t trust him or whatever by not sharing her problems and worries, but she was actually making him believe he was the problem, that he’d done something awful to upset her. That only made Mac feel ten times worse about this whole thing.

“Dick, no,” she said with a sigh as she got up from her seat and went over to him. “I swear, it’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong, I promise,” she swore, as she held his hand tight in hers. “It’s just... I guess, there’s something I should tell you, about me.”

“Whatever it is, I’m totally cool with it,” he promised her, before he even had a clue about what it was. “Unless, y’know, you’re gonna tell me you used to be a dude or somethin',” he said, only half joking but laughing anyhow when her eyes went wide at the suggestion.

“Definitely not that.” She chuckled too, glad of the ridiculous remark in amongst her serious issue, if only because it broke the tension for her just a little bit.

She led him to the couch where they sat down together and it took Mac a few moments to gather herself before she began her explanation.

“A few months ago, I asked Veronica to look into my parents for me,” she admitted. “I paid her to dig up any secrets or whatever. I just needed to know why I felt so different to them.”

“You thought you were like adopted or something?” he checked, figuring that was what she meant and happy to be proved so smart when she nodded her head in agreement.

“I figured it had to be something like that, and it turns out I was right,” she told him. “Only... well, there’s kinda more to it than that,” she went on, feeling so weird about telling him this, even though he was being really sweet so far and still holding her hand tight in his. “There was a mix up at the hospital, the day I was born. Two baby girls, born a day apart, they went home with the wrong parents,” she said, tearing up as she was forced to tell the painful story for the first time.

When Veronica told it to her, it had been devastating in a lot of ways, to know her parents were not her own, to find out she had another Mom and Dad on the other side of town, as well as a little sister he would never really know. It hurt like hell but keeping it to herself was pretty easy. Sitting here now, retelling the tale to her boyfriend was bringing it all to the surface in the worst way.

“Oh, babe, I’m sorry.” Dick looked devastated on his girlfriend’s behalf as he pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight.

For a few moments, she took the comfort he offered, burying her face in his chest and letting go of a few tears she could no longer keep in. It wasn’t long though before she was pulling from his grasp, determined now to finish the tale she had begun.

“Dick, there’s one more thing,” she told him, sniffing hard and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know who the other girl is, the one living with my real parents,” she said, swallowing hard to prevent her voice wavering any more than it already was. “It’s Madison Sinclair,” she said bitterly as Dick’s eyes went almost comically wide.

“Madison?” he echoed, taking in the idea. “Like, my ex the total psycho bitch Madison?” he checked, hardly able to believe the way things had worked out here.

“Yeah.” His girlfriend sadly. “She has my parents, my sister, the life that should’ve been mine.” She sighed, tears drying up now as she calmed down, glad her story was over and feeling better for getting it out in the open.

Dick’s arms were still round her and though he looked stunned, she had expected that, he wasn’t so freaked out as to run away from her or anything so that seemed like a good thing. Mac took the oppurtunity to go further into his arms once again and be held for a while, his chin resting on top of her head as he rubbed her back.

Inside his head, Dick’s brain was working a mile a minute trying to figure out what all this meant. All he kept coming back to was that his ex-girlfriend’s life should have been his current girlfriend’s own. If things had been the way God intended, if both girls had been brought up by their real and biological parents, then Madison would have been Mac and Dick would’ve been dating her in the first place.

Before he had a chance to voice any of the thoughts he might have been having, the moment was shattered by a voice rarely heard in the Casablancas household of late.

“Dick!” his father boomed, not angrily but loudly and in the kind of stern way that made Mac jump the second she heard it, though she remained in her boyfriend’s arms still. “Ah, there you are.” Big Dick smiled as he found his son. “I was... Oh.” He stopped short half way across the room when he spotted Mac. “I didn’t know you had company.”

“Hey, Dad.” Dick forced a smile. “This is Mac,” he said, then off his Dad’s fairly blank look he added. “I told you I got a tutor, and that she’s my girlfriend now.”

“Ah, yes, I do seem to recall,” he said with a vague gesture. “Hello, Mac,” he greeted her, feeling a little awkward using the odd nickname for a girl he’d never met before and honestly barely recalled his son ever mentioning.

“Mr Casablancas.” She nodded politely. “Um, I’m sorry, I should probably be going,” she said quickly getting up and giving her face one more good wipe over with the back of her hand as she moved towards the table to gather her books.

“Oh, not on my account, I hope,” said Dick’s dad, a little bemused by this whole situation.

Honestly, when Dick told him he had got a tutor, he hardly believed it, and when he mentioned making that very same girl his latest girlfriend, well, he hadn’t taken that too seriously either. Finding his son making out on the couch with Mac would’ve been something normal, but finding him comforting the poor girl when she was in tears, being as kind and gentle as he’d ever seen the boy, well, that was something else entirely.

As Mac made a hurried exit, with barely time to kiss her boyfriend’s cheek and wave goodbye before she was gone from the sight of both Casablancas man, father and son found themselves alone, and both feeling just as awkward as the other.

“Um... should I ask why she was so upset?” Dick Snr asked at length as he sat down.

“Family stuff.” His son shrugged from his place at the other end of the couch, deciding he probably shouldn’t be spreading his girlfriend’s secrets around.

The last thing Mac needed was to become the subject of Neptune gossip, Dick was at least smart enough to know that. What he couldn’t figure out at all was why his father and sought him out to talk to him like this, especially since he was being nice and smiling and all. Dick pretty much only saw his Dad when they were forced together, sharing dinner or having to attend a function of some kind. Other than that it was strictly punishment and yelling that brought the older Casablancas to the younger for any kind of conversation. Today, it seemed, like a great many other things had proved, was different.

“So, I think we need to have a little talk about your grades, Dick,” his father said eventually. “I’ve just received an impromptu report card from your principal, something I requested after your promise to clean up your act and buckle down with your studies.”

“So, what’s the verdict?” his son asked him, trying to hide the fact he was just a little worried.

Sure, Mac was an awesome teacher, and he’d learnt a lot lately. Dick knew his grades had improved, but whether they were up enough to gain Daddy Dearest’s approval, well that remained to be seen.

“I have to say, I am hugely impressed, Dick.” Richard Casablancas Snr smiled as he looked over the card in his hand once again. “I mean, I truly believed that if you applied yourself you could do better, but this? I’m sorry, son, I underestimated your abilities.”

Dick grinned at the praise so seldom received and took the card from his Dad’s hand when he offered it. Where Ds and Es once sat, now Cs and Bs took their places in almost every subject. In the space of a couple of months he had come so far, and Dick knew just exactly why.

“Hey, it’s totally cool that you wanna tell me I’m awesome or whatever,” he told his father just as the older man got to his feet, “but, without Mac, I couldn’t have done any of this,” he said with a definite shake of his head.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” his father considered, “but she certainly seems to be a very good influence on you, Dick.” He smiled, putting a hand on the boys shoulder and looking proud of him. “You keep hold of the girl, son, and I don’t just mean for your studies sake. She might just be the making of you,” he told him, before he turned to leave the room. “Oh, and one more thing,” he called from the door. “Congratulations, son,” he told Dick from a distance. “You’re making me very proud.”

As his father left the room, Dick glanced at the stunning grades on the card in his hand and then up at the door where his Dad had just exited the room.

“Yeah.” He smiled, knowing what his father meant with his slightly stuffy but honest words. “I love you too, Dad,” he said with a smile, to the blank space before him.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

Dick was used to feeling confused but rarely was he ever out of his depth like this. Lying on his bed with his hands behind his head, he stared at the ceiling and thought over the events of the day. He ought to be happy, he was happy to know that his father was proud of him at last. Big Dick spent little or no time with his son, preferring to just throw money his way and leave him to his own devices. Today he had proven that he at least cared a little, and that touched Dick way more than he was ever likely to admit outloud to anyone.

Two problems had recently been solved, it seemed. Daddy was proud of him, and Madison was long gone from his mind. Dick had a new girlfriend and as stunning as it was even to himself, he already loved her. He hadn’t told Mac those words yet but that was okay, they had all the time in the world for that. What was bothering Dick was not his life but hers.

It was crazy to think how things might’ve been different. If Madison and Mac had been taken home by the right parents they might’ve turned out so different. Madison would be named Cindy and would be poor, whilst Mac would never even have had that nick-name, and instead would be an 09er just like him. It scrambled Dick’s brain even more than algebra or geometry to think about it too much, but he came to one definite conclusion that he felt the need to share with his girlfriend immediately.

It was getting late, just now dark beyond his window, but this was too important to wait. Leaping off his bed, Dick grabbed up his keys and headed out to the car. He had to see Mac, had to make sure she was okay and that she understood just how he felt. Honestly, he wasn’t sure how he’d come to love her so much and so fast, but it was as real, if not more so, than anything else in his whole life had ever been.

In minutes he was parked down the street from her house. Dick knew knocking on her door now, having to explain why he was around so late to Mac’s parents, that would not end well. Instead he got out of the car and moved to sit on the hood, as he pulled out his cell and called Mac’s number.

“Hey, Dick,” she said as she answered his call.

“Hey, babe.” He smiled just from hearing her voice. “I’m out front. You wanna come talk to me?” he asked, hearing the confusion in her voice as she agreed and said she’d been there in just a minute.

True to her word, she appeared shortly afterwards, in her track pants and sweatshirt, cute as Dick had ever seen her.

“Are you okay?” she asked as she approached him, happy to go into his arms as he pulled her close and kissed her sweetly on the lips.

“Kinda what I came to ask you,” he admitted as he helped her up to sit beside him on the hood of the car. “My dad kinda picked a bad time to bust in on us-”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted. “I was done with confession corner anyway.” She shrugged.

She looked so vulnerable and awkward somehow, Dick felt awful for her. There was no way for him to imagine what she was going through, knowing who she really was and forced to pretend she didn’t, as far as he could tell.

“Do your parents know that you know?” he asked carefully, mindful of upsetting her but determined to have all the facts so he didn’t screw anything up here.

“No, I never told them.” She sighed, leaning into him as his arm went around her shoulders. “I can’t hurt them like that, I mean, its not like this is really their fault.”

“I guess not,” Dick agreed, not sure if he really believed that but deciding it was better to be on Mac’s side right now, no matter what.

“Mrs Sinclair knows. My mom,” she said, feeling so strange about it. “I can’t even process it most of the time, it’s too complicated.” She sighed. “I have a sister who I only met once, but somehow I love her. Not that I don’t love my brother,” she added quickly, feeling as if she’d implied it in what she’d said and feeling awful all over again.

“Hey, don’t stress, babe, I totally get it,” Dick assured as he kissed the top of her head. “Beav is like a total pain in the ass, but at least I know he’s definitely my bro, y’know? It would be so freaky finding out maybe he wasn’t,” he admitted, making Mac wonder.

All the years Dick had been in her grade, she always thought he was so shallow and didn’t care about anything. Getting as close to him as she had brought so many surprises, not least the fact she’d realised he was very easy to fall in love with. He cared what his father thought of him, he loved his brother no matter what, and he could be so sweet when he tried.

“Thank you,” she said, as she looked up at him in the light of the streetlamp. “For listening, and for understanding.” She smiled. “It’s so weird. Sometimes I feel like I want to yell and tell the whole world the truth, and other times... sometimes I wish I never found out at all,” she admitted.

“Sometimes families suck.” He shrugged like it were obvious and definite, but not at all a big deal in the long run. “But y’know, you and me, we’re for keeps, babe,” he promised her. “’Cause no matter who your parents are or whatever, you’ll always be Macky to me,” he told her, making her giggle.

“That’s good.” She nodded once. “Because, weirdly, that part of my life actually makes sense right now,” she told him, leaning in to kiss his lips.

“The way I figure, you and me are, like, destiny or whatever,” he told her, and for the life of her Mac couldn’t figure out if he was deliberately being romantic or whether it just seemed that way because they were out here alone together under the stars. “’Cause like, if you were the Sinclairs daughter, you’d be Madison, only way cooler, but then we would’ve been dating in the first place, right?” he said the whole thing a little convoluted, but thankfully Mac was smart enough that she followed.

“I guess that’s true,” she agreed, with a smile, if only because she knew he meant to be sweet whether he was or he wasn’t. “Could we maybe not talk about this anymore?” she asked then. “I mean, I wanted you to know, and now you do and it’s really great that you understand and everything, but... I guess I’m just worried it’s going to change how you look at me.”

“Why?” he asked her, apparently genuinely baffled by her worries, but then Dick was baffled but a lot of things. “Dude, you’re totally still you. Hell, you could be rich or poor, smart or dumb, blonde or brunette, I’m still gonna be as in to you as ever, ’cause you’re Mac, and she is totally awesome,” he declared, loud enough that his girlfriend was surprised the next street didn’t hear him.

“Ssh, you’ll wake the entire neighbourhood,” she warned him though she was laughing at the same time, so surprised and yet elated was she by the words he’d just now spoken.

“Why do I care?” He shrugged, as he pulled her into his arms. “You’re my girl, Cindy Mackenzie, and... and I love you,” he said as seriously as he’d ever said anything in his entire life.

Mac was so stunned and overwhelmed by those words she honestly didn’t know how to react. Her eyes were locked with his, her breath caught in her throat and she lost sight of there rest of the world for a few seconds as she revelled in a moment she’d never experienced before.

“I love you too,” she said at last, just when Dick was starting to wonder if he’d done the wrong thing here.

He didn’t make a habit of this, telling girls he loved them and meaning it so completely. The words had passed his lips but they’d never come from the heart, not like this. It was crazy to think the geeky girl from Ghost World who he’d hired to teach him Math could change his life so much, but she had. Mac had taught him so much more than school stuff, she’d shown him things about people that he didn’t want to face up to, and things about himself that were even harder to deal with.

When he kissed her then, it might seem like a hopeless cliché to any outsider who walked by. Young couple in the moonlight, sharing a special kiss that proved the love they’d just confessed for each other, but there was nothing about this that was cliché to Dick. He’d found a girl who understood him and who somehow he understood too. They were going to stand together through everything, against anyone who would try to put either of them down, and even as a couple they would not be alone.

Logan and Veronica seemed to be as destined as Mac and Dick were, a surprise to all and yet it worked. The four of them had shown that the class divide, social status, cliques, and all, it was nothing that could not be overcome. Love conquers all was a famous quote, but had never seemed more true right now as Mac broke the kiss with Dick only because she could go no longer without breathing.

“Y’know, if someone had told me six months ago that I’d be sitting on the hood of a car in the moonlight, kissing Dick Casablancas, I’d’ve had them admitted to a psych ward.” She laughed, pretty sure that would not offend this guy, even now she knew he actually did have feelings, and most of them seemed to be for her.

“Like you didn’t want me from Day One,” he said cockily, not really surprised when she swatted him in the chest for the suggestion. “Hey, I’m willing to admit I thought you were hot from the start,” he told her honestly, making Mac all the more glad that they were only in half-light where he would not see her blush.

“Maybe I thought you were kind of attractive,” she admitted, “but looks aren’t everything, and until I got to know you I couldn’t make an informed decision,” she said smartly.

Apparently not listening to anything she said after ‘attractive’, Dick just grinned at the compliment and held her close.

“Dude, I so knew you wanted me!” he told her, pulling her into another kiss, before Mac had a chance to argue.

‘To hell with it,’ she thought as she kissed him back, enjoying a few more moments pleasure before she knew she would have to get back to the house, for fear of her mom and dad realising she was gone and going crazy about it.

She had started out as Dick’s tutor in all of this, paid to teach him the lessons he needed to achieve good grades, which he seemed to be doing. She hadn’t banked on learning a few things along the way too, and from a guy like Dick Casablancas, of all people.


End file.
